Day 61: Hagia Sofia, the Blue Mosque

We're staying right in the heart of Sultanhamet, home to a number of the largest mosques in the city. Each is decked with an impressive array of loudspeakers, and the early morning call to prayer resonates throughout the otherwise silent city just before dawn. Every mosque has its own muezzin, but they're all singing the same call, yielding an eerie, almost-echo effect.

We were wide awake for this, of course, since we're still jetlagged from India. We got a nice early start, and after our morning run-in with the rug merchant, we made our way to Hagia Sofia.

Hagia Sofia was built by the same emperor Justinian that built the cistern, also in the 6th century. It was originally a Byzantine Christian cathedral, and has endured a long series of natural disasters, sackings, and eventual conversion into a mosque before finally getting desanctified in the 1930s and converted into a public museum. This long history is most evident from the floor, which is heavily scarred and patched in many places.
The upper gallery (reached by a long cobbled ramp) houses some mosaics dating back to the original cathedral. These were plastered over when the cathedral was converted into a mosque, but have since been uncovered. It's difficult to imagine what the plasterers must have thought when covering these beautiful walls with plaster.
The dome of Hagia Sofia partially collapsed last year, after holding up for over 1300 years, so the interior of the church has a huge scaffolding in it. If you look carefully, you can see the stairs in the scaffolding, which gives you a sense of the massive scale of this church.

Unlike the Hagia Sofia, the Blue Mosque is still a working mosque. We turned up at mid day prayer, so we had to wait around for a while before we could see the inside.

Four huge pillars support a large dome heavily decorated with blue and white Iznik tiles. But the Blue Mosque is really most impressive from the outside. Its six towering minarets are visible from all over Istanbul.