Istanbul, Turkey • Beautiful Coffee Shop and Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque Tour

Our 30th Wedding Anniversary Mediterranean Trip Part 12
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This is our 30th Wedding Anniversary trip we've been planning since February 2024.
We started our trip October 13th leaving Toronto, Canada and flew direct to Venice, Italy. Now we are on a 10 day Mediterranean Cruise on the Norwegian Dawn Cruise Ship.
Today we are in Istanbul, Turkey to visit the city and check out the wonderful mosques and the amazing foods.

Istanbul:
largest city and principal seaport of Turkey. It was the capital of both the Byzantine Empire and the Ottoman Empire.
The old walled city of Istanbul stands on a triangular peninsula between Europe and Asia. Sometimes as a bridge, sometimes as a barrier, Istanbul for more than 2,500 years has stood between conflicting surges of religion, culture, and imperial power. For most of those years it was one of the most coveted cities in the world.
The name Byzantium may derive from that of Byzas, leader of the Greeks from the city of Megara who, according to legend, captured the peninsula from pastoral Thracian tribes and built the town about 657 bce. In 196 ce, having razed the town for opposing him in a civil war, the Roman emperor Septimius Severus rebuilt it, naming it Augusta Antonina in honour of his son. In 330 ce, when Constantine the Great dedicated the city as his capital, he called it New Rome. The coinage, nevertheless, continued to be stamped Byzantium until he ordered the substitution of Constantinopolis. At the end of the 1st millennium, Greek speakers were reported to refer to trips there as eis tēn polin, “into the City,” rather than “to Constantinople.” By the 13th century this Greek phrase had become an appellation for the city: Istinpolin. Through a series of speech permutations over a span of centuries, this name became Istanbul. Until the Turkish Post Office officially changed the name in 1930, however, the city continued to bear the millenary name of Constantinople. Pop. (2007) 10,757,327; (2019 est.) urban agglom., 15,113,808.

THE HAGIA SOPHIA GRAND MOSQUE - ONCE A CHURCH, LATER A MOSQUE.
Masterpiece Of The History Of Architecture:
The Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque / Ayasofya-i Kebir Cami-i Şerifi, with its innovative architecture, rich history, religious significance and extraordinary characteristics has been fighting against time for centuries, was the largest Eastern Roman Church in İstanbul. Constructed three times in the same location, it is the world’s oldest and fastest-completed cathedral. With its breathtaking domes that look like hanging in the air, monolithic marble columns and unparalleled mosaics, is one of the wonders of world’s architecture history. The sheer dazzling beauty of mosque with its magnificent play on space, light, and color provokes worship in the believer! Hagia Sophia pose on the ground of the first hill of İstanbul, precisely at the tip of the historic peninsula, surrounded by the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn on three sides.
When it was first built, it was named Megale Ekklesia (Big Church); however, after the fifth century, it was referred to as the Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom). The church was the place in which rulers were crowned, and it was also the biggest operational cathedral in the city throughout the Byzantine period. The first church was constructed by Emperor Konstantios (337-361) in 360. The first church was covered with a wooden roof and expanded vertically (basilica) yet was burned down after the public riot that took place in 404 as a result of the disagreements between Emperor Arkadios’ (395-408) wife empress Eudoksia and İstanbul’s patriarch Ioannes Chrysostomos, who was exiled. The patriarch’s mosaic portrait can still be viewed at the tymphanon wall located in the northern part of the Hagia Sophia. No remains have been recovered from the first church; however, the bricks found in the mosque storage branded ‘Megale Ekklesia’ are predicted to belong to the first construction.