The Hagia Sophia Mosque is one of the most famous and most visited mosques in Turkey and in the world as a whole. It is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. It is distinguished by its stunning architecture and historical importance to both the Byzantines and the Ottoman Empire. It was built in 1500 AD as an Orthodox Christian cathedral, but it was converted into A mosque after the Ottoman conquest in 1453, and then turned into a museum on the orders of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of modern secular Turkey, and since then prayer and religious rites have been banned at the site, but Muslims have made long campaigns to allow them to worship in it, based on the That will turn it back into a mosque in 2020.