One of the world's top city break destinations will be getting new flights from a London airport - making it even easier to visit some of the world's most incredible landmarks.

ISTANBUL, June 27. /TASS/. Turkish historian and professor Ilber Ortayli has called for restricting tourists and worshippers' access to Istanbul's Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque (formerly the Church of ...

After the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople in 1453, it converted the Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Many years later, in 1935, the Turkish government declared the structure a museum.

Although it is no longer one of the world’s largest, actively-used places of worship (that honor now belongs to Mecca’s Masjid al-Haram mosque, home of the Kaaba), the Hagia Sophia remains a ...

As cities go, Istanbul’s history makes it one of the most fascinating, patchworked hubs around, and the Hagia Sophia, a vast complex which has operated as a cathedral, a mosque, a museum and ...

Hagia Sophia saw 7.7 million visitors stream through its spacious interior last year. Around 2.1 million of them are foreign tourists, many of whom pay 25 euros for an entry ticket, generating ...

Hagia Sophia saw 7.7 million visitors stream through its spacious interior last year. Around 2.1 million of them are foreign tourists, many of whom pay 25 euros for an entry ticket, generating ...

Istanbul: The Hagia Sophia of Istanbul is no stranger to change -- through the centuries the city's architectural jewel has gone from church to mosque to museum, back to mosque again.

Hagia Sophia saw 7.7 million visitors stream through its spacious interior last year. Visitors take photographs of Byzantine mosaics in the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque in Istanbul on April 14, 2025.

The Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque is a Muslim place of worship — but that is not the reason it attracts so much attention. The European side of Istanbul, Turkey, is seen above.

The Hagia Sophia is at the centre of Turkey's Byzantine, Ottoman and secular history. How did the sixth-century cathedral become a Waqf property, get converted to a museum, and again a mosque ...