Originally built as a Greek Orthodox cathedral in Constantinople in 537 CE, briefly a Catholic cathedral in the early 1200s, converted to a mosque by the Ottomans in 1453, then opened as a museum under the secular Republic of Turkey in 1935 before its present incarnation again as a mosque in 2018, the Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) is rightly considered one of the greatest buildings on Earth. It was the world's largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years. All it needed was a cat.
Read More