Illuminating Hagia Sophia for the Pontiff: The Visit and the Restoration of the Millennium
Oylum Talu asked what it felt like to guide the Pope. The visit in question was that of Pope Benedict XVI on 30 November 2006. That question and…
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Sedat Bornovalı’s essays and research notes on Hagia Sophia. Posts open on the author’s main website.
Examining Hagia Sophia: Reflections from ‘Tarih Söyleşileri’
Hayri Fehmi Yılmaz and I were guests on episode 159 of the history programme Tarih Söyleşileri, broadcast on TRT 2. Prompted by questions from Coşkun Yılmaz and Mehmet…
The Genesis of a Monument: How Hagia Sophia Became Itself
The question in the title of the GZT Alfa conversation is a broad one: how did Hagia Sophia become Hagia Sophia? Ranging from building decisions to repairs, from…
Translating Architecture: Hagia Sophia Recontextualized
Must we be inside a building to get to know it? This conversation about the Hagia Sophia History and Experience Museum considers the relationship between a historic building…
Hagia Sophia in a Cambridge Album: A Little-Known Sixteenth-Century View
The Dryden Album at the University of Cambridge holds a little-known view of Hagia Sophia, drawn in the late sixteenth century by a Western artist who most probably…
Quo Vadis, Hagia Sophia? Dialogues on the Future of a Monument
For Times of Türkiye, I met Kübra Sönmezışık and Nagihan Haliloğlu inside Hagia Sophia. The recording appeared as “Tarihin En Uzun Şiiri: Ayasofya | Nereye Gidiyoruz?”, a title…
Hagia Sophia’s Transformation: Between Function and Preservation
When Hagia Sophia returned to use as a mosque, questions about conservation and visitor arrangements came to the fore. The report published in Sözcü relays what I said…
Deciphering the Mosaics of Hagia Sophia: A Chronological Perspective
Do Hagia Sophia’s mosaics all belong to the same period? In a BBC Türkçe report by İrem Köker and Neyran Elden, published on the day the building reopened…
Capturing a Monument in a Book: The Challenge of Chronicling Hagia Sophia
The conversation in Arkitera’s okuryazar series concerns Tarihin En Uzun Şiiri: Ayasofya. What questions arise when a book brings together a building’s architecture, history and cultural significance? Where…