Page 39 - WINE DINE AND TRAVEL MAGAZINE FALL 2023 DISCOVERING TURKEY

The line moved quickly, taking us through
tight security where we and and anything we
carried were scanned. Mary donned her head
wear, and we both stopped outside the en-
trance to remove our shoes. Getting them off
and tucking them into a line of cabbies wasn’t
a challenge. But putting them back on proved
problematic for Ron since where was no place
to sit. He eventually succeeded, but his efforts
likely amused some fellow visitors.
The Hagia Sophia is a former Christian
church built nearly 1,500 years ago by the
Byzantine emperor Justinian I. An architec-
tural marvel of the Byzantine Empire, it was
inspired by the soaring dome of Rome’s Pan-
theon, for hundreds of years viewed as “the
greatest dome in the world.” The Hagia
Sophia’s central dome is an impressive 102
feet in diameter and rises 184 feet above the
interior’s sprawling carpeted floor and mosaic
and marble-paneled walls.
After the Ottoman conquest in 1453, the Ha-
gia Sophia became a mosque and four minarets
were added without compromising the Byzan-
tine structure. In 1934, the mosque was secu-
larized and became a popular museum. Earlier
this year, in a gesture to please conservative
religious voters, Turkey's President Erdogan
changed it back to a mosque.

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