AYA SOFYA TURKEY

Aya Sofya is the great architectural landmark at the heart of Istanbul, with its four minarets poised like moon-bound rockets. Constructed in the 6th century AD as an Orthodox church, it later became a mosque and, since 1935, a museum. The enormous structure was built in just five years, and its musk walls are topped by an imposing dome, 101ft wide and 184ft high. The domes base is ringed by windows, so that from within the structure, the dome seems almost to hover ethereally above the building.