Hagia Sophia! Plus, It Looks So Sarong, But It Feels So Sa-right

Hello all!
Yesterday, we finally made our long-awaited visit to Hagia Sophia, or the Ayasofya Muzesi as it's known in Turkish. But Hagia Sophia wasn't the only monumental domed structure we visited. We also went to the Blue Mosque, or Sultanahmet Camii (named for its builder, Sultan Ahmed I), before Friday prayers. Our guide for the two monuments was OSU PhD student Günhan Börekçi, a former tour guide and a future renowned academic. His dissertation is on Sultan Ahmed I, who put himself on the throne at 13, started building his mosque at 19, and died at 27. I won't bore you with the details of the building's construction, but here's a couple pictures from one of Istanbul's most impressive sites:

I finally figured out how to take pictures inside buildings! This is the south wall, facing Mecca, with incredibly beautiful stained glass windows

The monumental dome and one of the four 'elephant legs', the enormous pillars that support the ceiling.
But the day's main attraction was, of course, this lil guy:
God, I love this building.
A quick summary before I post an excessive amount of pictures (but still a small fraction of the number I actually took): the building standing today is the third incarnation of the Hagia Sophia church; the first two were destroyed. It was built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian from 532-537, in less than 6 years. Obviously, the minarets date from the Ottoman era, and flying buttresses were also added, but overall the building exists today much as it did 1500 years ago.
When we first entered the building, I was immediately disappointed to see huge scaffolding covering up about a fourth of the floor space:
But, come on, I was in Hagia Sophia. See that mosaic above the door? We spent about 20 minutes talking about that in Byzantine class (it's Leo VI or Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos being blessed by Christ). As Günhan said, you could spend a lifetime in this building and never get sick of it. Here's the dome, which has collapsed several times:
As a result, the dome is not perfectly circular. We finally made our way over to the apse where we gazed up at one of the building's most famous mosaics, the Virgin and Child:
That's it on the left (in the center is the Archangel Gabriel; on the right is one of the huge Islamic shields bearing Koranic verses added after 1453). The Byzantine Empire was convulsed by two periods (730-787 and 814-843) of iconoclasm. For a theocratic state like Byzantium, issues of religious representation were very much political issues, and for over a century, emperors, patriarchs, and the people fought over whether figural representation was heretical or not. The Virgin and Child mosaic is the first of the post-iconoclasm mosaics, from 867. Miraculously, it has survived. For the most part, the Ottomans whitewashed the building's mosaics; humidity has taken a greater tole on them than Islam. A note on Islam and Hagia Sophia- walking through the building, which is now a museum after nearly 500 years as a mosque, I couldn't help but feel that the Islamic parts (the shields, the mithrab, the covering of mosaics, etc.) should be removed. I don't think it's inappropriate to, say, put them in a museum and restore the building to its Byzantine glory.
Another one of the most famous Byzantine images greeted us as we climbed to the upper gallery:
This image of Christ is sold everywhere by street vendors here. The date is uncertain, but apparently it dates from after the Byzantine reconquest of the city from the Latins in 1261. Apparently there are 4 acres of mosaics in Hagia Sophia; I won't pictures of all of it up, but here's a few more:
This is the Empress Zoe mosaic. As a royal daughter, she held the power to make men emperor, which she did through marriage three times. Each time, the head on this mosaic was changed; this final version shows her with her third husband Constantine IX Monomachos. Her face was also changed to make her look more youthful; you can tell up close how much they have been altered. Lest you need any more examples of how sumptuous Byzantine art is:
This is a family portrait of Emperor John II Comnenus, his wife Irene (she's blond! She was Hungarian I think), their son Alexius, and his BFFs the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ.
A porch overlooking the vast nave.
The final mosaic, and one of my favorites: it shows the Emperors Justinian and Constantine presenting to Virgin and Child models of Hagia Sophia and Constantinople, respectively.
The point is, everyone should see Hagia Sophia at some point in their lives.
After Hagia Sophia we went to yet another hamam (I coined this post's title quote at the Bursa hamam but forgot it until yesterday). This time it did come with a massage, which I was terrified of, especially because my masseur looked like Genghis Khan. It was actually more relaxing than I thought, and we had a great time. Immediately after, I had to run to the other side of town to go to a dinner party at my friend Char's flat. I made it back to Galata by about midnight.
Today's our first day to relax in a good two weeks, so that's what I'm up to now. Thanks for reading, and I'll talk to you all soon!