Hagia Sophia, the Temple of The Holy Wisdom, Sancta Sofía or whatever you want to call it is possibly the most important building that still stands when it comes to talking about Western (and, slightly, Non-Western) culture.

It served as a Byzantine Orthodox Cathedral, Roman Catholic Church, a Mosque, now as a Museum, also unofficially for a while as a refuge, a school, a temple for paganism and most importantly it changed architecture, and is a prime example for respect and tolerance between “clashing” beliefs and differences in religious creed.

Hagia Sophia should be considered the home of love, the shrine of respect, the house of “God” whatever your God may be, and most importantly, yes, the Temple of Holy Wisdom.

Not once was it destroyed by ones in order to discredit the beliefs of others. Not once was it torn down in symbol of protest. If anything during the iconoclastic period, and later during it’s time as a mosque, frescoes were protected and covered with lime.

I cried when I walked in. I could not believe where I was standing. I could not believe that there was a place on earth where an image of the Holy Mother and an engraving for Allah could remain, perfectly intact, side-by-side over the Omphalos.

The Byzantine were right, this is the navel of the world.