Hagia Sophia | Turkey

Built in the sixth century, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey was once the worlds largest cathedral, then a mosque and since 1934 a government museum. This past week, Ed Rothenstein (NYT) wrote of his visit to Turkey's sacred-secular museum: "If you stand in the center of the Hagia Sophia here and gaze upward at what is one of the world's tallest domes, you can be staggered by the overlapping layers of ruination and grandeur in this Church of Holy Wisdom. And I don't mean the scaffolding promising overdue restorations, the haunting mosaics disclosed under layers of plaster." (Read full article, click [link])