Hagia Sophia: was born a church, turned into a museum, and livng as a mosque

Hagia Sophia: was born a church, turned into a museum, and livng as a mosque

A broad debate that has implications for more than a thousand years, between followers of Christianity and Islam and lovers of history and engineering, it is the cathedral, mosque or Hagia Sophia Museum in Istanbul, but for the time being you can call this building the Hagia Sophia Mosque.

A few days ago, Turkey's Supreme Administrative Court overturned a 1934 decision to transfer the Hagia Sophia from a mosque to a museum, considering the change illegal, to return it to a mosque again.

In the wake of the court’s decision, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the opening of the Hagia Sophia to Muslims to perform the prayers, amid great international controversy.

But history says that the Hagia Sophia building in its origin was not a museum or a mosque, but it is a 1500-year-old Byzantine cathedral during which it bore many characteristics between a church, a mosque and a museum, so that the final result is an ancient building that witnesses the history of two religions and an engineering design that still fascinates architects and history lovers.