Historic Areas of Istanbul
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How it came to be
Where Asia and Europe face each other across the Bosphorus, the capitals of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires followed one another.
Hagia Sophia was completed in 537 as a Christian cathedral. After the Ottomans took the city in 1453, it became a mosque.
Travellers who came here
- 1841-04
He came through the Dardanelles past Gallipoli and arrived on 25 April. On 5 May he left aboard the Ferdinand I, sailing up the Bosporus into the Black Sea.
- 1867-08
The ship anchored at the mouth of the Golden Horn at daylight on 17 August. He visited Hagia Sophia but wrote in his notebook that he found nothing there to go into ecstasies over.
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