Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia (/ˈhɑːɡiə soʊˈfiːə/; from the Greek: Αγία Σοφία, pronounced [aˈʝia soˈfia], “Holy Wisdom”; Latin: Sancta Sophia or Sancta Sapientia; Turkish: Ayasofya) was a Greek Orthodox Christian patriarchal basilica (church), later an imperial mosque, and is now a museum (Ayasofya Müzesi) in Istanbul, Turkey. The Roman Empire’s first Christian Cathedral, from the date of its construction in 537 AD, and until 1453, it served as an Eastern Orthodox cathedral and seat of the Patriarch of Constantinople,[1] except between 1204 and 1261, when it was converted by the Fourth Crusaders to a Roman Catholic cathedral under the Latin Empire. The building was later converted into an Ottoman mosque from 29 May 1453 until 1931. It was then secularized and opened as a museum on 1 February 1935.[2] Famous in particular for its massive dome, it is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture[3] and is said to have “changed the history of architecture”.[4] It remained the world’s largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years, until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520.

The current building was originally constructed as a church between 532 and 537 on the orders of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I and was the third Church of the Holy Wisdom to occupy the site, the previous two having been destroyed by rioters. It was designed by the Greek geometers Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles.[5] The church was dedicated to the Wisdom of God, the Logos, the second person of the Trinity,[6] its patronal feast taking place on 25 December, the commemoration of the birth of the incarnation of the Logos in Christ.[6] Although sometimes referred to as Sancta Sophia (as though it were named after Sophia the Martyr), sophia being the phonetic spelling in Latin of the Greek word for wisdom, its full name in Greek is Ναὸς της Αγίας τοῦ Θεού Σοφίας, Naos tēs Hagias tou Theou Sophias, “Shrine of the Holy Wisdom of God”.[7][8] The church contained a large collection of relics and featured, among other things, a 15-metre (49 ft) silver iconostasis.[citation needed] The focal point of the Eastern Orthodox Church for nearly one thousand years, the building witnessed the excommunication of Patriarch Michael I Cerularius on the part of Humbert of Silva Candida, the papal envoy of Pope Leo IX in 1054, an act that is commonly considered the start of the East–West Schism.