Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia is one of the oldest and most amazing buildings on Earth. It was first built nearly 1,500 years ago as a Christian church with the biggest dome anyone had ever seen. People said it looked like it was 'hanging from the sky on a golden chain!'

In the year 1453, a brave young Ottoman sultan named Muhammad al-Fatih (Mehmed the Conqueror) — he was only 21 years old! — opened the city of Constantinople and renamed it Istanbul. He turned Hagia Sophia into a great mosque and prayed the first Friday prayer inside it.

Over the centuries, Ottoman sultans added four tall pencil-thin minarets, a beautiful mihrab, and giant green calligraphy plaques showing the names of Allah, Muhammad ﷺ, and the rightly-guided caliphs. Today, Hagia Sophia is once again a working mosque where thousands pray every day.

If you visit, look up at the huge dome — it is so big you could fit a whole castle inside. The light comes through tiny windows around its edge, making it look like the dome is floating in the sky. It is one of the great wonders of the Muslim world.