The Hagia Sophia is among the hottest attractions in Istanbul, and for excellent reason why – it’s a fantastic position!

If you happen to’re making plans a travel to Istanbul, remember to put the Hagia Sophia in your record of must-sees.

Guided Hagia Sophia tickets are reasonably reasonably priced, and there are a couple of other ways to shop for them. You’ll be able to acquire tickets on the door, or upfront on-line. We propose purchasing your tickets on-line forward of time to steer clear of any traces or crowds on the appeal. Consider us, visiting the Hagia Sophia is an enjoy you gained’t wish to pass over!

Purchasing tickets for to the Hagia Sophia

Then again, purchasing Hagia Sophia tickets is usually a bit complicated, particularly in case you’re no longer acquainted with town or how Turkish ticketing works.

To avoid wasting you some hassle (and will let you profit from your travel!), right here’s a snappy information on how to shop for tickets to peer the Hagia Sophia. The very first thing you wish to have to grasp is that there are two varieties of tickets: a typical and loose front price ticket and a guided excursion price ticket.

The common loose front price ticket will acquire you get right of entry to to the Hagia Sophia, however doesn’t come with any data or steerage in regards to the construction itself. Alternatively, the guided excursion price ticket comprises an audio information in addition to get right of entry to to positive portions of the Hagia Sophia which are generally closed off to guests. If you happen to’re taking a look to be told extra in regards to the historical past and tale at the back of this fantastic piece of structure, we advise going with the guided excursion possibility!

Then again, in case you’re brief on time or simply wish to discover at your individual tempo, then getting a typical front price ticket would suffice.

You’ll be able to purchase a guided excursion price ticket right here or a guided excursion price ticket with a historian right here.

Just right to learn about visiting Hagia Sophia

Buying Hagia Sophia tickets is a straightforward procedure, however there are some things you must take note before you purchase.

In the beginning, it’s necessary to grasp that the Hagia Sophia is closed on Mondays.

Secondly, admission to the Hagia Sophia is loose, until you want to have a information, telling you extra about this pretty construction and its historical past.

Then we advise purchasing a excursion upfront on-line. Now not most effective will this prevent time, nevertheless it’ll additionally help you profit from discounted charges for teams of 10 or extra folks. So how do you buy tickets on-line?

Make a decision what number of tickets you wish to have. Then merely fill out your touch data and hit “post.” It’s that simple!

If you wish to talk over with different within reach sights just like the Topkapi Palace or the Sunken Palace, then you definately’ll wish to acquire a multi-site price ticket.

After you have your price ticket, merely display it to the safety guard on the front and revel in your talk over with!

For guided excursions you’ll have a loose admission for kids underneath 2 years previous. Discounted price ticket costs for kids 3 to 7 years previous (with legitimate picture ID). Audio guides to be had relying at the price ticket possibility booked.


Hagia Sophia Spotlight Excursion with Information and Audio Information App

This can be a price ticket for an unique, guided VIP excursion of the Hagia Sophia. Ebook your Hagia Sophia Excursion on-line now and benefit from the Highlights Excursion with integrated Audio Information App!

Worth: €14.25

Bargain: 5%

  • Bestseller Excursion
  • Fast Affirmation
  • Unfastened Cancelation
  • At once To be had

Ebook right here!

How the Hagia Sophia talk over with works

After you set your order, you’re going to obtain a affirmation with the assembly level and main points for downloading the Hagia Sophia Audio App. Your Istanbul Welcome Card information will meet you on the Hagia Sophia and escort you inside of for a 30 minute excursion, offering crucial ancient data alongside the way in which. After the excursion, be happy to invite your information anything else in regards to the Hagia Sophia, Byzantine Empire or Istanbul. You’ll additionally obtain a Hagia Sophia map to be able to discover by yourself and be informed extra via audio remark in your smartphone app.

Vital data

You gained’t be capable to minimize the safety line. All over top season, the safety take a look at can take as much as half-hour.

Your benefits

Be versatile – You decide the beginning time and tempo
Particular person Commute – You don’t depending on a gaggle!
Person pleasant

Combi price ticket: Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace and Sunken Palace Basilica Cistern and Audio Information App

Worth: €51.30

Bargain: 5%

Bestseller Excursion
Fast Affirmation
Unfastened Cancelation
At once To be had

You might cancel those Hagia Sophia tickets as much as 24 hours previous to the beginning of the enjoy to obtain a complete refund.

This VIP combo price ticket will save you money and time because it lets you simply talk over with Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace and Sunken Palace. After your reservation, you’re going to obtain a affirmation with assembly puts and occasions, in addition to obtain main points for the Audio Apps. Your information will meet you in entrance of Topkapi Palace, Hagia Sophia and the Basilica Cistern. You are going to skip the price ticket traces (with the exception of Hagia Sophia) and revel in a 30 min highlights excursion with an authorized native excursion information inside of every museum. Afterwards, you’ll keep at every sight so long as you need and pay attention to thrilling tales for your integrated audio information apps in your smartphone.

Ebook this excursion right here!

Combo price ticket Istanbul is legitimate for three days

You’ll be able to talk over with all 3 museums in 1 day or at other days. Your identify can be on our record for three days. You’ll be able to come on the to be had occasions, to our assembly issues and talk over with together with your Istanbul Welcome Card information those most sensible museums.

Vital data

You’ll be able to skip price ticket traces with guides, however can’t skip the safety line.

Your benefits

Be versatile – You decide the beginning time and tempo
Particular person Commute – You don’t depending on a gaggle!
Person pleasant

Sunken Palace: Fast access with highlights excursion + audio information

Worth: €19.95
Period: versatile
Incorporated:
– Fast admission to the Sunken Palace
– English talking excursion information
– Audio information
Cancellation time limit: You might cancel those tickets as much as 24 hours previous to the beginning of the enjoy to obtain a complete refund.

Ebook this price ticket right here!

This can be a VIP price ticket for the Basilica Cistern. Purchase it on-line to avoid wasting time through skipping the lengthy price ticket traces. Plus, you’ll get a highlights excursion and an audio information app!

Afterwards, you’ll spend as a lot time as you need indoors, taking note of the informative audio information app in your smartphone, and finding the Basilica Cistern at your individual tempo.


Hagia Sophia customer data

Hagia Sophia is located within the Eu aspect of Istanbul, within the Sultanahmet district (Previous Town), as regards to Topkapi Palace. It’s just a few mins’ stroll from the resorts in Sultanahmet. Istanbul World Airport is 20 km away.

Hagia Sophia is open on a daily basis with the exception of Mondays.

April 15-Oct 1 it’s open 9 am-7 pm with ultimate admission at 6 pm;
Oct 1-April 15 it’s open 9am-5pm with ultimate access at 4pm.

Hagia Sophia closes for Ramadan and Eid Ul Adha vacations.

Is the Hagia Sophia barrier-free?

The primary flooring is offered for wheelchair customers.

Then again, the higher flooring isn’t out there because of the various steps and cobblestones.

Is images allowed in Hagia Sophia?

Sure, images is authorized throughout the Hagia Sophia.

Then again, using tripods is unlawful.

Is there a get dressed code to apply at Hagia Sophia?

Sure, since this is a non secular website, all guests are anticipated to decorate modestly. If imaginable, shorts and sleeveless tops must no longer be worn.

Ladies should put on a headband to go into the mosque. Unfastened headscarves may also be discovered close to the doorway.

As well as, guests should depart their sneakers out of doors.

Extra helpful details about the Hagia Sophia

Through the years, Hagia Sophia has withstood a lot of occasions and screw ups, equivalent to the autumn of tough civilizations, fires or earthquakes.

Nowadays, this landmark hides a number of attention-grabbing tales. What began because the Church of St. Sophia ultimately become the Hagia Sophia Mosque, then it used to be run as a museum and after a while it used to be transformed again right into a mosque.

To find out what makes this well-known landmark so particular right here:

Hagia Sophia is a kind of puts that all the time turns out to have one thing new to provide. Regardless of how again and again you talk over with there’s all the time some recent secret ready to be exposed. It’s section church, section mosque – however its wealthy historical past signifies that there’s a lot more to be told about this position than meets the attention.

Allow us to take you on a excursion via one of the maximum fascinating details and figures surrounding Hagia Sophia…

Ordinary structure and brief building time of Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia used to be in-built a shockingly brief period of time – most effective six years! The architects who designed it had been forward in their time, the usage of wisdom of mechanics and arithmetic that used to be ordinary for the generation.

The construction itself is an absolutely authentic design, combining options of a longitudinal basilica and a centralized construction. It has an enormous, 32-meter primary dome that hangs from the ceiling, in addition to two semidomes (half-domes) on each side of the longitudinal axis. When it comes to its structure, the construction is sort of sq.. It has 3 aisles, which might be separated through columns.

There also are galleries above the aisles, and big marble pillars that enhance the dome. The partitions above the galleries and the bottom of the dome have home windows that permit in herbal mild. This hides the columns all through the day, giving the affect that the cover is floating in mid-air.

Hagia Sophia Structure

Hagia Sophia is an awe-inspiring architectural fulfillment and the primary of its sort in Byzantine structure. It remained the most important cathedral on the earth till Seville Cathedral used to be constructed. The vestibule situated out of doors the jap a part of the atrium is recently closed off.

To get right of entry to the interior atrium, there are 5 doorways one can input via. From this vestibule, there are 9 doorways main into the nave itself. Get admission to to higher galleries is made imaginable through ramps – a not unusual function amongst Constantinople church buildings underneath building all through that time frame.

Hagia Sophia Mosaics

The Hagia Sophia used to be fantastically embellished with mosaics all through the Byzantine duration, depicting the Virgin Mary, Jesus, saints and emperors or empresses. The historical past of the earliest mosaics is unknown, as lots of them had been destroyed or lined all through the storming of the cathedral. The mosaics reached their top all through the reigns of Basil I and Constantine VII. All over the Fourth Campaign in 1204, the Latin Crusaders looted many Byzantine structures, together with Hagia Sophia. Many gorgeous mosaics had been got rid of and shipped to Venice.

After the Ottoman career of Constantinople in 1453 and the conversion of Hagia Sophia right into a mosque, the mosaics had been whitewashed or plastered. With the recovery of the Fosatti brothers in 1847, the mosaics had been exposed. However they remained lined till 1931, when a recovery program started underneath the path of Thomas Whittemore.

In 1934, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ordered that Hagia Sophia change into a museum. The recovery and growth then came about. Then again, lots of the nice mosaics exposed through the Fosatti brothers had been almost certainly destroyed with the 1894 earthquake.

Tunnel of the Hagia Sophia

In line with legend, Hagia Sophia used to be necessary for the Vatican. There have been tunnels main from Hagia Sophia to the Princes Islands (Kinaliada). The underground tunnels ran throughout the town of Constantinople. The massive cistern used to be situated underground.

The tunnels underneath Hagia Sophia reached the hidden rooms with secret writings that had been hidden there all through the sieges. Researchers printed some tombs underneath the Hagia Sophia. Amongst them had been the tombs of St. Antinegos, the primary particular person to be buried in Hagia Sophia, and Patriarch Athanasius.

Resulting in Sultanahmet Sq. and Topkapi Palace are two slim corridors about 70 centimeters top, in all probability utilized by Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II as a hidden break out path to steer clear of being noticed through electorate in occasions of risk or strife.

Historical past of Hagia Sophia

The primary church at the website of Hagia Sophia used to be almost certainly constructed through Constantine I in 325, at the foundations of a pagan temple. His son, Constantius II, consecrated it in 360. It used to be broken in 404 through a fireplace that broke out all through a rebel, after the second one exile of St. John Chrysostom, who used to be then the patriarch of Constantinople.

The church used to be rebuilt and enlarged through the Roman Emperor Constans I, after which rededicated through Theodosius II in 415. All over the Nika rebellion of January 532, the church used to be burned down once more. Justinian I used this as a chance to construct an much more magnificent alternative.

Nowadays’s construction is basically the similar because the construction from the sixth century, even supposing an earthquake led to a partial cave in of the dome in 558 (which used to be then restored in 562). There have been two different partial collapses after that, and then the construction used to be rebuilt smaller and strengthened from the out of doors.

For greater than a millennium, it served because the cathedral of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Then again, it used to be sacked through the Venetians and Crusaders in 1204 all through the Fourth Campaign.

After Constantinople used to be conquered through the Turks in 1453, Mehmed II had the church transformed right into a mosque. A picket minaret, huge chandelier, mihrab (area of interest indicating the path of Mecca), and minbar (pulpit) had been added. The purple minaret on the southeast nook of the construction used to be possibly constructed through Mehmed II or his son Bayezid II. The slim white minaret at the northeast aspect of the mosque used to be constructed through Bayezid II. The 2 an identical minarets at the west aspect had been commissioned through Selim II or Murad III and constructed through Ottoman architect Sinan within the 1500s.

The construction used to be transformed right into a museum in 1935 through Turkish President Kemal Ataturk. Artwork historians imagine the construction’s gorgeous mosaics supply essential perception into the state of mosaic artwork within the duration simply after the top of the iconoclastic controversy within the eighth and ninth centuries.

Hagia Sophia is a part of the UNESCO International Heritage Website online, which additionally comprises different ancient structures and websites in Istanbul, such because the Blue Mosque.