The Last Liturgy in the Hagia Sophia

On the evening of May 28, 1453, the Hagia Sophia was packed for the final time. For nearly a thousand years, that cathedral had been the beating heart of Christendom — its golden mosaics catching candlelight, its dome soaring as if heaven itself had settled over Constantinople. Emperors had been crowned beneath it. Pilgrims had wept at its beauty. The city around it had been the greatest in the Christian world, home to half a million souls, protected by walls that seemed eternal.…