Completed in AD 537 for the emperor Justinian I, Hagia Sophia was for centuries the largest interior space in the world. It was designed by two Greek mathematicians, Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles, after an earlier church on the site was destroyed in the Nika riots.
Its great dome was among the first to rest on pendentives, curved triangles of masonry that let a round dome sit over a square space. The result is a vast, open hall rising about 182 feet, and it is said to have "changed the history of architecture." It is considered the supreme example of Byzantine architecture.
For nearly a thousand years it was the cathedral of Constantinople. After the city fell to the Ottomans in 1453, it became a mosque, and its minarets were added. It became a museum in 1935 and was made a mosque again in 2020.
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