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C I T I E S & B E YO N D
istanbul
TURKEY
By rights, cultures should collide in Istan-
bul. It is a city that bridges East and West,
straddling Europe and Asia, and one that
has been subject to pagan, Christian, and
Muslim rulers. Yet its cityscape is a happy
example of what happens when conventions
are transcended, whether in the fourth-
century Hagia Sophia—a Christian cathedral
until 1453, then a mosque until 1932, and
now a museum—or Sultanahmet Camii, the
Blue Mosque, infused with the architectural
elements of an earlier Byzantine epoch.
DON’T MISS
Hagia Sophia, begun in 360, is one of Europe’s great-
est Byzantine buildings. Admire its vast interior, cov-
ered in precious sixth-century mosaics and adorned
with treasures brought from across the Roman,
Byzantine, and Ottoman empires.
Hagia Sophia is now a museum, but began its life as a
church and later became a mosque.