The Aya Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey is one of the largest, oldest, and most significant buildings in the world.

It has served as a holy place for three different religions, and has been the focal point of two different empires.

Today, almost 1500 years after its construction it is still

making headlines. Learn more about the I.Sophia on this episode of

everything everywhere daily. Daily. This episode is sponsored by audible.com. My audiobook recommendation today is 1453, the

Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam in the West by Roger Crowley.

This book details the last days of the Byzantine Empire and the eventual conquest of New Rome

by the Ottoman Empire and the remarkable historic shift which followed.

You can get a free one month trial to Audible and two free audio books

by going to audibletrial.com slash everything everywhere,

or by clicking on the link in the show notes.

Before I begin, let me address the elephant in the room.

How do you pronounce the name of this building? The problem stems from the fact that the name was given in classic Greek, which is pronounced slightly different than modern Greek, and then the city was eventually taken over by Turks.

If you had no background and were just a standard English speaker, you might pronounce it Hagia.

However, that has never really been how it's been pronounced.

There's also Hia, Hagiya with the 8 silent. The standard

pronunciation and what I'll be using in this episode is Aia. This would be

as if it were spelled AYA which is actually how it's spelled in Turkish.

In modern Greek, it might be A-Y-A-Y-A-Y-A.

The second thing is the meaning of the name.

I've read in several places where they refer to the building as

Saint Sophia. That is emphatically not what the name is and never was. The name of the

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