Istanbul: Places
Photos & Words: Salina Christmas

A reminder of the Old Christian era at Aya Sofia.

This room was where the synod used to take place. That piece on the wall is pre-Islamic, in fact, pre-Catholic.

This former church was the heart of the Holy Roman Empire before it fell to the Ottomans, and administration relocated to Rome.

Both the Orthodox and the Catholic churches have claims on this building. Some of the Muslim purists want it to be a working mosque again.

In the 50s, Kamal Ataturk did a political thing by turning the building into a museum to keep the religious demands at bay.