Little Hagia Sophia

About Little Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia, officially the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque, is a mosque and a major cultural and historical site in Istanbul, Turkey. It was formerly a church (360–1453) and a museum (1935–2020). The last of three church buildings to be successively erected on the site by the Eastern Roman Empire, it was completed in AD 537, becoming the world's largest interior space and among the first to employ a fully pendentive dome. It is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and is said to have "changed the history of architecture". From its dedication in 360 until 1453, Hagia Sophia served as the cathedral of Constantinople in the Byzantine liturgical tradition, except for the period 1204–1261 when the Latin Crusaders installed their own hierarchy. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, it served as a mosque, having its minarets added soon after. The site became a museum in 1935, and was redesignated as a mosque in 2020.

The Little Hagia Sophia Mosque (Kucuk Ayasofya Camii), originally the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, is one of the most important early Byzantine buildings in Istanbul, in a quiet quarter south of the Blue Mosque near the Marmara shore of the historical peninsula. The emperor Justinian built it in the sixth century, between about 527 and 536 depending on the scholar, at the same time as the great Hagia Sophia, and the historian Procopius then described it as an adornment to the whole city. The building has a central plan under an octagonal dome, decorated with exquisitely carved marble capitals and a long Greek frieze naming Justinian and his wife Theodora; its carved ornament is among the finest surviving from the period, and a modern historian of Byzantium wrote that by the originality of its architecture and the richness of its carving it ranks in Constantinople second only to Hagia Sophia itself. Despite its Turkish name it was probably not a model for the great Hagia Sophia. It was converted into a mosque in the early sixteenth century under the Ottomans, with a minaret and a madrasa added in its courtyard, which today houses craft shops and a quiet tea garden. The mosque is beautifully decorated and has a far calmer atmosphere than the big, busy mosques.

Where:

Istanbul, Türkiye