About this place
Built in 532–537 under Emperor Justinian by the architects Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus, the church became a mosque after the conquest of 1453, a museum in 1934 and a mosque again in 2020. Since 2024 foreign visitors follow a separate paid route through the upper galleries, while the ground floor is reserved for worshippers. From the galleries you look down into the main hall beneath the dome, some 55 metres high, and see the finest surviving Byzantine mosaics.
