Hagia Sophia is a former Byzantine cathedral in Istanbul, Turkey, built in the 6th century and now a mosque.
Hagia Sophia is on the list of Wonders of the Middle Ages, and is part of the Historic Areas of Istanbul, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The great domed church of Hagia Sophia became "a model for an entire family of churches and later mosques", according to UNESCO.
Hagia Sophia is in the Sultanahmet area of Istanbul, Turkey, in the city's Fatih district.
Hagia Sophia stands on the first hill of Istanbul, at the tip of the historic peninsula, which has the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus, and the Golden Horn on three sides. The Byzantine city around Hagia Sophia was called Constantinople.
The Blue Mosque stands across Sultanahmet Square from Hagia Sophia. Topkapı Palace, the palace of the Ottoman sultans, stands next door to Hagia Sophia.
You can reach Hagia Sophia from the rest of Istanbul and from the city's two airports in the following ways.
To get to Hagia Sophia from Istanbul Airport, take the metro to Sultanahmet, which takes about 1 hour 5 minutes.
The metro route from Istanbul Airport runs on the M11 line to Gayrettepe, then on the M2 line to Vezneciler, on the historic peninsula.
The Havaist airport bus, line HVİST-11, leaves Istanbul Airport about once an hour and stops at Çatladıkapı in Sultanahmet. A Havaist ticket to Sultanahmet costs EUR 8 (about USD 9). The bus ride from Istanbul Airport to Sultanahmet takes about 1 hour 50 minutes.
A taxi from Istanbul Airport takes about 45 minutes to cover the 45 km (28 mi) to Sultanahmet.
All three routes from Istanbul Airport end in or near Sultanahmet, the area around Hagia Sophia, a building with nearly 1,500 years of history.
The Hagia Sophia that stands today is the third church built on the same site in Istanbul.
The first church of Hagia Sophia was dedicated in 360 by Emperor Constantius II, a son of Constantine the Great. Constantius II's church had a wooden roof. The first Hagia Sophia burned down in 404, during a riot that followed the exile of the city's patriarch, John Chrysostom.
The second church of Hagia Sophia was dedicated in 415 by Emperor Theodosius II. The second church burned down in the Nika revolt of January 532, a riot that caused great destruction and loss of life across the city.
The German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul dug up remains of the second church about 2 m (7 ft) below ground level, including steps from its monumental entrance and carved panels of lambs that stand for the 12 apostles. Pieces of the second church's entrance are on display in Hagia Sophia's west garden.
Hagia Sophia was built between 532 and 537 AD, in the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I.
Work on the third Hagia Sophia began immediately after the Nika revolt of January 532. The new church of Hagia Sophia was inaugurated on 27 December 537.
Hagia Sophia was finished in less than six years, a remarkably short time, according to Britannica.
The Byzantine emperor Justinian I, with architects Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus, built Hagia Sophia.
Justinian I, who ruled the Byzantine Empire from 527 to 565, ordered the building of the third Hagia Sophia.
Anthemius of Tralles was a mathematician from Tralles, in western Turkey (today's Aydın). Isidore of Miletus was a geometer and engineer from Miletus, an ancient city near today's Balat. Both architects of Hagia Sophia were most likely influenced by the mathematical theories of Archimedes, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The architects of Hagia Sophia are known, which is unusual for a 6th-century building.
Hagia Sophia was built to replace the cathedral of Constantinople, the second church on the site, which had burned down in a riot.
Justinian I used the rebuilding to plan a far grander cathedral than the church that burned.
Hagia Sophia was the cathedral of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople for more than a thousand years.
According to a well-known story, Justinian I walked into the finished Hagia Sophia on its opening day and cried out "Solomon, I have surpassed you", comparing the church with the temple of King Solomon in Jerusalem.
Hagia Sophia is a mosque, officially the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque, although the building was a church for its first 916 years.
Hagia Sophia was an Eastern Orthodox cathedral from 537 until 1204, when Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade looted Constantinople. The Crusaders crowned their own emperor, Baldwin of Flanders, in Hagia Sophia, and it served as a Roman Catholic cathedral until the Byzantines retook Constantinople in 1261. The great church was then an Orthodox cathedral again until 1453.
After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Mehmed II made Hagia Sophia his imperial mosque. Mehmed II added a wooden minaret, a great chandelier, a mihrab (the niche that shows the direction of Mecca) and a minbar (the pulpit). The Christian mosaics of Hagia Sophia were covered with whitewash during the Ottoman period.
The Turkish Council of Ministers decided in 1934 that Hagia Sophia become a museum, and it opened as one in 1935. During its years as a museum, conservators uncovered and restored the mosaics of Hagia Sophia.
On 10 July 2020, Turkey's highest administrative court overturned the 1934 decision, ruling that Hagia Sophia belonged to Mehmed II's charitable foundation. Hagia Sophia reopened for Muslim prayers on 24 July 2020.
Hagia Sophia has survived earthquakes because the damaged parts were rebuilt and strengthened after each collapse, over nearly 1,500 years.
An earthquake brought down part of the dome of Hagia Sophia in 558, only 21 years after the church opened. The Byzantines rebuilt the dome to a greater height and rededicated it in 562.
Two more partial collapses followed in the Byzantine period, after which the damaged parts were rebuilt on a smaller scale. The whole church of Hagia Sophia was then strengthened from the outside. Fires and earthquakes damaged Hagia Sophia again in the 10th and 14th centuries.
Sinan, the chief architect of the Ottoman Empire, added buttresses to the sides of Hagia Sophia in the reign of Sultan Murad III (1574 to 1595). The great church has not collapsed since Sinan's work, despite several great earthquakes in Istanbul.
The Swiss-Italian Fossati brothers led a restoration of Hagia Sophia from 1847 to 1849, during which more than 800 men worked to strengthen the dome and the surrounding semi-domes.
In April 2025, work began on the most significant repair of Hagia Sophia in more than 150 years, to protect the building from the earthquake expected in Istanbul. The 2025 restoration plan includes strengthening the main dome, the semi-domes and the main arches, replacing the worn lead covering of the domes and upgrading their steel framework.
The main dome, the central feature of Hagia Sophia's architecture, is visibly uneven today.
Hagia Sophia combines a long basilica with a huge central dome, in a wholly original way.
The floor plan of Hagia Sophia is almost square, but the inside looks rectangular, because large semidomes on the east and west sides stretch the roof along the length of the building.
The main hall of Hagia Sophia, called the naos, has three aisles separated by rows of columns, with galleries above the side aisles. A single apse closes the east end of the main hall. Two entrance halls, the inner and outer narthex, stand across the west end of the building.
The design of Hagia Sophia remained unique in Byzantine architecture, because later Byzantine builders did not try to copy the design.
Hagia Sophia is about 100 m (328 ft) long and 69.5 m (228 ft) wide, measured from the apse to the outer narthex.
Other sources give Hagia Sophia's size as 82 m (269 ft) by 73 m (240 ft), so published figures for the building's length and width differ.
Sources also differ on the height of Hagia Sophia's main dome. The main dome is 48.5 m (159 ft) high, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, lower than the 55.6 m (182 ft) given by Turkish sources.
Hagia Sophia's main dome is not a perfect circle. The dome measures 31.87 m (104.6 ft) from north to south and 30.86 m (101.2 ft) from east to west.
The dome of Hagia Sophia is held up by four great arches, which stand on four massive marble piers.
Four pendentives, curved triangles of masonry, fill the corners between the four arches and turn the square base into the circle the dome sits on. Two large semidomes, resting on smaller semidomes and arcades, carry part of the load of the dome of Hagia Sophia to the east and west.
A ring of closely spaced windows runs around the base of the dome. Each window is lined with gold mosaic. In daylight, the glare from the windows hides the supports, so the dome of Hagia Sophia seems to float above the church.
Procopius, the biographer of Justinian I, described the great dome as a "golden dome suspended from Heaven".
Hagia Sophia is lined inside with costly coloured marble and ornamental stone. The arcades of the great church stand on marble columns taken from older buildings.
Justinian I ordered the provinces of the Byzantine Empire to send their best building stone and architectural pieces for Hagia Sophia. The white marble of Hagia Sophia came from Marmara Island, the green porphyry from the Greek island of Euboea, the pink marble from Afyon in Turkey and the yellow marble from North Africa.
The marble wall panels of Hagia Sophia were made by splitting single blocks of marble in two and setting the halves side by side in symmetrical patterns.
The great church has 104 columns, 40 on the ground floor and 64 in the upper gallery.
Every wall of Hagia Sophia not covered in marble was decorated with mosaics made of gold, silver, glass, terracotta and coloured stone. The surviving Byzantine mosaics of Hagia Sophia are on show in the upper gallery today.
The main sights of Hagia Sophia are the great dome, the Byzantine mosaics and the Ottoman additions to the prayer hall.
The upper gallery offers a view of the entire prayer hall. The most famous mosaics of Hagia Sophia, including the Deesis and the imperial portraits, are in the south gallery.
The dome of Hagia Sophia carries a verse of the Quran. The four pendentives below the dome are decorated with seraphim, the angels believed to guard the throne of God.
The verse in the dome of Hagia Sophia comes from the Surah An-Nur (24:35), which begins "Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth". Kazasker Mustafa İzzet Efendi, one of the most important calligraphers in the reign of Sultan Abdülmecid (1839 to 1861), wrote the dome verse. In the 6th century, the top of Hagia Sophia's dome featured a large cross in a round medallion.
The two seraphim on the east side of Hagia Sophia are mosaics. The two seraphim on the west side were damaged in the Byzantine period and repainted as murals.
In the Ottoman period, star-shaped metal caps covered the faces of the seraphim of Hagia Sophia. In 2009, during repairs to the dome mosaics, the face of one seraph was uncovered.
The Deesis mosaic is a large mosaic panel on the west wall of Hagia Sophia's south gallery, mostly dated to the 13th century.
The Deesis mosaic shows Christ in the middle, with Mary on the left and John the Baptist on the right. Mary and John the Baptist are shown asking Christ to forgive humanity on the Day of Judgment.
Only fragments of the Deesis mosaic survive.
The imperial mosaics of Hagia Sophia are mosaic panels that show Byzantine emperors and empresses beside Christ or Mary, from the 10th to the 12th centuries.
The Empress Zoe mosaic, in the upper gallery, shows Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and Empress Zoe on either side of Christ Pantocrator, Christ as ruler of the world. The 11th-century Zoe mosaic represents the gifts the imperial family made toward repairs to Hagia Sophia.
The Komnenos mosaic, also in the upper gallery, shows Emperor John II Komnenos, his wife Irene, and their son Alexios beside Mary holding the child Jesus. The Komnenos mosaic dates from the 12th century.
The 10th-century mosaic over the south door of the inner narthex shows Mary and the child Jesus between two emperors. Constantine the Great holds out a model of the city of Constantinople to Mary. Justinian I holds out a model of Hagia Sophia.
Above the Imperial Door, a 10th-century mosaic shows Emperor Leo VI (886 to 912) paying homage at the feet of Christ.
The Viking graffiti in Hagia Sophia is a runic inscription scratched into a marble parapet in the middle of the south gallery, thought to date from the 9th century.
Most of the Viking inscription in Hagia Sophia is worn away. The scholar Elisabeth Svärdström read the surviving letters, "-ftan", as part of the Norse name Halfdan. The often-quoted wording "Halfdan was here" does not come from the runes themselves, because the rest of the inscription is illegible.
The Halfdan runes are thought to have been carved by a Viking soldier serving in the Byzantine army.
A second runic inscription in Hagia Sophia, found in 1975, reads, "Ari made these runes."
The calligraphy roundels of Hagia Sophia are eight huge round wooden panels, each 7.5 m (24.6 ft) across, hung high on the walls of the prayer hall.
The roundels of Hagia Sophia bear the names of Allah, the Prophet Muhammad, his grandsons Hasan and Hussain, and the first four caliphs, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali, in gilded letters.
Mustafa İzzet Efendi, the calligrapher of the dome verse, wrote the roundels during the restoration of 1847 to 1849. The Hagia Sophia roundels are made of linden wood, which is light and long-lasting.
The eight roundels are among the largest calligraphy roundels in the Islamic world.
Hagia Sophia has four minarets, the towers used for the call to prayer, all added in the Ottoman period.
The red brick minaret on the southeast corner of Hagia Sophia dates from the reign of Mehmed II or his son Bayezid II, in the 15th century. Bayezid II added the narrow white minaret on the northeast side, according to Britannica.
The two identical minarets on the west side of Hagia Sophia were built by the architect Sinan in the 16th century, during the reign of Selim II or Murad III.
The first minaret of Hagia Sophia, a wooden tower that Mehmed II added to one of the semidomes, has not survived.
The Marble Door is a marble doorway between Hagia Sophia's west gallery and south gallery. The visitor route through the upper gallery passes through the Marble Door.
One side of the Marble Door is said to represent heaven, and the other, hell. The south gallery beyond the Marble Door hosted religious meetings of the patriarchate, including the church council held under Emperor Manuel I Komnenos in 1166.
Enrico Dandolo's grave marker lies in the floor of the south gallery, opposite the Deesis mosaic. Enrico Dandolo, the Doge of Venice who led the Fourth Crusade, died in Constantinople in 1205.
The Omphalion is the spot on the floor of Hagia Sophia where Byzantine emperors were crowned, marked by a large marble circle surrounded by smaller circles of coloured stone.
The Omphalion lies on the right-hand side of Hagia Sophia's main hall.
The Imperial Door is Hagia Sophia's largest door, leading from the inner narthex into the main hall. The 6th-century Imperial Door is 7 m (23 ft) tall, made of oak with a bronze frame, and covered in bronze plates. Only the emperor and his entourage used the Imperial Door in the Byzantine period.
The Beautiful Door, the bronze door at the entrance to the inner narthex, is the oldest part of Hagia Sophia, dated to the 2nd century BC. Emperor Theophilos brought the Beautiful Door from a pagan temple in Tarsus in 838.
The sultans' tombs at Hagia Sophia are mausoleums on the mosque grounds that contain the graves of five Ottoman sultans and their families.
The five sultans buried at Hagia Sophia are Selim II, Murad III, Mehmed III, Mustafa I and Ibrahim. Princes of the Ottoman dynasty are buried in the tombs of Hagia Sophia too.
The sultans' tombs stand among other Ottoman buildings on the grounds of Hagia Sophia, including a primary school fountain, a clock room, a treasury, and a soup kitchen.
Mosque etiquette applies to every visitor to Hagia Sophia, which remains a working mosque.
Since 15 January 2024, tourists have visited Hagia Sophia from the upper gallery, while worshippers use the ground-floor prayer hall.
The tourist entrance of Hagia Sophia is a gate opposite the Fountain of Ahmed III, beside the main gate of Topkapı Palace. A ramp leads from the tourist entrance up to the gallery of Hagia Sophia. The visitor route ends at a second ramp on the building's northeast side.
Worshippers enter through the main gate on Hagia Sophia Square.
The Hagia Sophia visitor route ramps are not suitable for wheelchair users. If you use a wheelchair or find walking difficult, go in through the separate entrance for Turkish citizens with your ticket.
The figures of Mary and the child Jesus in the apse mosaic of Hagia Sophia are covered by curtains during prayers and uncovered between services.
Yes, Hagia Sophia is open to tourists of any faith, and it stayed open to visitors after the building became a mosque again in 2020.
When Hagia Sophia reopened for prayers, Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said the mosque's doors would be "wide open to all, whether they be foreign or local, Muslim or non-Muslim". Turkish officials said Hagia Sophia would stay open to tourists in the same way as the Blue Mosque.
Foreign visitors pay EUR 25 (about USD 28) for the upper-gallery route, which has been in effect since 15 January 2024.
Entering the ground-floor prayer hall of Hagia Sophia to pray is free. Children under 7 visit the gallery free.
The EUR 25 gallery ticket is also payable in Turkish lira, at an exchange rate shown at the ticket office. Museum passes, such as the Museum Pass Istanbul and the MüzeKart, are not valid on the Hagia Sophia gallery route.
A combined ticket for the gallery and the Hagia Sophia History and Experience Museum costs EUR 50 (about USD 56).
To buy Hagia Sophia tickets, go to the ticket office at the tourist entrance, or book online in advance.
The Hagia Sophia ticket office takes card payments.
DEM Museums is the official online seller of Hagia Sophia tickets. Travel companies also sell online tickets, often with an audio guide, at a little more than the ticket office price.
An online ticket for Hagia Sophia saves queuing at the ticket office, but every visitor still goes through the security check at the entrance.
Hagia Sophia's opening hours for tourists are usually 9 am to 7:30 pm, every day. The Hagia Sophia ticket office closes at 7 pm.
On Fridays, the Hagia Sophia visitor route closes to tourists from 30 minutes before the noon prayer until 90 minutes after the prayer. The Friday noon prayer moves with the sun through the year, so the exact Friday closing time of the visitor route changes from week to week.
The Hagia Sophia dress code requires shoulders and knees to be covered for all visitors, and women must cover their hair.
The Hagia Sophia ticket office sells headscarves for EUR 1 and body covers for EUR 3.
Visitors keep shoes on along the Hagia Sophia gallery route. Remove shoes only in the carpeted ground-floor prayer hall.
The best time of year to visit Hagia Sophia is April to May or September to October, when Istanbul is mild and has fewer rainy days than in winter.
Average daily highs in Istanbul run from 17.4°C (63°F) in April to 22.3°C (72°F) in May, and from 25.9°C (79°F) in September to 20.6°C (69°F) in October. Istanbul averages about 3 to 10 rainy days a month from April to October.
July and August are Istanbul's hottest months, with average highs of 29.7°C (85°F). December and January are the wettest months in Istanbul, with about 16 rainy days and 89 mm (3.5 in) to 99 mm (3.9 in) of rain each month.
The best time of day to visit Hagia Sophia is at the 9 am opening, before the queues build up.
The gallery ramp at Hagia Sophia is often clear of queues before 9:30 am and slow-moving by noon.
If you visit Hagia Sophia on a Friday, go early in the morning or late in the afternoon, outside the noon prayer closure. Spend Friday midday at Topkapı Palace next door.
Allow 45 to 90 minutes at Hagia Sophia for the gallery route, plus time for the security queue at the tourist entrance.
The security queue at Hagia Sophia takes up to about 30 minutes in the high season.
No, you don't need a guided tour of Hagia Sophia because the gallery route includes audio information that plays on your phone.
The gallery's audio information starts when you scan a QR code with your phone, and is available in 23 languages.
Travel companies sell guided tours of Hagia Sophia with a licensed guide online, from about EUR 35 (about USD 39) per person.
Disposable headphones for the audio information are available at the ticket office, but bringing your own earphones is the simplest travel tip for the gallery route.
Use these tips to get the most out of a visit to Hagia Sophia.
Staying in Sultanahmet saves a journey across Istanbul before Hagia Sophia opens at 9 am.
The best area to stay near Hagia Sophia is Sultanahmet, where hostels and hotels at every price point are within about 800 m (0.5 mi) of the mosque.
The following budget hostels in Sultanahmet are within a short walk of Hagia Sophia.
The following mid-range hotels in Sultanahmet are close to Hagia Sophia.
The following luxury hotels in Sultanahmet are within a few minutes' walk of Hagia Sophia.
King rooms at the Sura Hagia Sophia Hotel offer views of Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, and the Sea of Marmara.
Hagia Sophia is pronounced HAG-ee-uh suh-FEE-uh in British English, with the main stress on FEE.
The g in Hagia Sophia is a hard g, as in "go", in the Collins English Dictionary pronunciation. Turkish speakers call Hagia Sophia Ayasofya.
Hagia Sophia means "Holy Wisdom" in Greek and is sometimes translated as "Divine Wisdom".
The first church on the site of Hagia Sophia was called the Megale Ekklesia, the "Great Church". The name Hagia Sophia came into use around 430, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In English, Hagia Sophia is also known as the Church of the Holy Wisdom. The Latin name for Hagia Sophia is Sancta Sophia.
Hagia Sophia is famous as the finest example of Byzantine architecture, according to the Collins English Dictionary, and for its history as a church, a mosque, a museum, and a mosque again.
The minarets and Islamic inscriptions of Hagia Sophia stand alongside its Christian mosaics, showing Istanbul's religious changes over nearly 1,500 years. Hagia Sophia is Turkey's most popular tourist destination, according to Britannica.
Hagia Sophia is one of the Wonders of the Middle Ages.
Hagia Sophia is a 6th-century Byzantine church turned into a mosque, while the Blue Mosque is a 17th-century Ottoman mosque, built as a mosque from the start.
The Blue Mosque, properly named the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, was built between 1609 and 1616 for Sultan Ahmed I, opposite Hagia Sophia, most likely to rival the older building. The Blue Mosque gets its name from the color of its interior, lined with more than 20,000 handmade tiles from İznik.
The Blue Mosque has six minarets, two more than its older neighbor. The Blue Mosque's central dome is 23.5 m (77 ft) across and 43 m (141 ft) high, smaller than Hagia Sophia's dome.
You can visit the Blue Mosque for free outside prayer times.
The weeping column, also called the wishing or perspiring column, is a column on the northwest side of Hagia Sophia with a worn hole that feels damp to the touch.
According to legend, the moisture in the weeping column cures eye problems and helps people have children, through the power of St Gregory the Miracle Worker. Another version of the legend says that anyone who puts a thumb in the hole and makes a wish has the wish granted.
The hole in the weeping column was worn by centuries of pilgrims rubbing the stone. Any moisture in the hole most likely comes from the cisterns under Hagia Sophia.
Gli, the cat who lived in Hagia Sophia, died of old age on 7 November 2020 at age 16.
Gli was born in Hagia Sophia and became famous through an Instagram account run by Gli's caretakers. Gli fell ill in September 2020, two months after Hagia Sophia reopened as a mosque. Treatment at a private veterinary clinic in Levent, Istanbul, began on 24 September 2020.
Istanbul Governor Ali Yerlikaya announced Gli's death.
Yes, several other Byzantine churches are called Hagia Sophia, including Little Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and the Hagia Sophia churches of Thessaloniki and Trabzon.
Little Hagia Sophia, or Küçük Ayasofya Mosque, is the former Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus in Istanbul, built during the reign of Justinian I. Little Hagia Sophia is part of the same UNESCO World Heritage Site as Hagia Sophia.
The Hagia Sophia of Thessaloniki, in Greece, is a Byzantine church that the Church of Greece still uses. The Thessaloniki church is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site listed in 1988.
The Hagia Sophia of Trabzon, on Turkey's Black Sea coast, was built between 1250 and 1260 for the Empire of Trebizond. The Trabzon church became a museum in 1964 and was reconverted to a mosque in 2013.
The Hagia Sophia History and Experience Museum is a separate, privately run museum about Hagia Sophia's history, housed in a restored Ottoman land registry building on Sultanahmet Square.
The History and Experience Museum is at At Meydanı Sokak No. 10 and features immersive galleries that tell the story of Hagia Sophia.
A ticket to the History and Experience Museum does not include entry to Hagia Sophia's upper gallery. The Hagia Sophia gallery ticket also does not include the History and Experience Museum. The ticket office at the tourist entrance sells a combined ticket for the History and Experience Museum and the Hagia Sophia gallery.