National Geographic Special - The World\'s Most Beautiful Places

93 CITIES & BEYOND

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.