Istanbul's Hagia Sophia is no stranger to lofty, poetic praise. Author Richard Winston, in his 2017 book Hagia Sophia: A History, recounts how the soaring church and mosque captured the imagination of writers over the centuries. To Michael of Thessalonica, a 12th-century scribe, the church was a cavernous "tent of the heavens," which man - with an assist from God - had erected. The sixth-century Byzantine poet Paul the Silentiary, a courtier to Emperor Justinian I, wrote, "Whoever puts foot within the sacred fane, would live there, for ever, and his eyes well with tears of joy."
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