Aya Sophya

I think my favourite place in Istanbul was the Aya Sofya. This building was first built as a Christian church. It was/is one of the three or four largest churches (St Paul’s in London and St Peter’s in the Vatican being two of the other larger ones.) When the Turks came to the area they turned it into a mosque. They covered the beautiful Christian mosaics with plaster, painting it in their own beautiful style, or they covered things with curtains. In Islam they don’t have any images of people or animals in their mosques. Now this place of worship is a museum. They’ve begun uncovering a number of the beautiful Christian mosaics. And I very much enjoyed that it was a place that had both Christian and Muslim symbolism. It too felt like a holy place. I think it would be a perfect place to hold interfaith worship services.