Hagia Sophia
Hagia Sophia, a fitting testimony to the Grand History of the City's glory days Around 660 BC, according to legend, Greek settlers from Megara founded the strategic port city of Byzantium (named after their King Byzas) on the Bosphorus Strait on advice from the Oracle of Delphi. Ever since then, the city has been vital to controlling trade between the Aegean and Black Seas. In 330 AD, Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (r. 306-337 AD) rebuilt and expanded Byzantium, renaming it Constantinople and making it the new capital of the Holy Roman Empire. Constantinople quickly became a centre of trade along the famed Silk Road attracting goods from all over the world and with it religious and cultural influences. Over the ensuing centuries, the city faced numerous sieges, including by the Avars, Persians, Arabs, Ottoman Turks, and Allied forces during WWI, and the founding of the modern state of Türkiye (Turkey) on October 29, 1923, following the collapse of the Ottoman...