Apr 27, 2024
Gobsmackingly brilliant and dramatic presentation of Agia Sofia's history.. !! - My wife and I are widely traveled, and have visited many museums, but this was our first encounter with an immersive CGI driven , dramatic presentation of any sort...
We were bowled over with the presentation of the dramatic history of Agia Sofia, and were made acquainted with so much new and detailed information, which we were not aware of, in our 3 previous visits over the last decade or so.. It really brought history to life, and for us was a brilliant experience... Highly recommended, as was its small antiquities museum.... So glad we did this in our 10 days in Istanbul
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Jul 12, 2024
Immersive experience, not museum - It is a fantastic immersive experience that I recommend doing before visiting the Santa Sofia mosque. It's not a museum. It can serve as an introduction to place yourself in time and know the changes in it.
Very brief for 25 euros which costs.
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Jul 5, 2024
Educational & interesting historical background - Best to visit the museum first then go to the mosque. The 2 attractions complement each other. The sound effects at the museum can be loud but you can turn down the volume of your headsets. I also liked the artifacts. Overall, a good educational visit for my family.
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May 6, 2024
PLEASANT EXPERIENCE ... MULTIMEDIA ... - As per the title. As already mentioned by other travelers, this entrance was included in our Santa Sophia ticket... so let's try this multimedia experience too. It is an existing museum on which a pleasant multimedia path has been applied. Everything well organised. At the entrance, a multilingual audio player is delivered which is set to the language preferred by the visitor (including Italian!) which works automatically (audio selection change) near each new room. Non-science fiction multimedia content but still enjoyable and above all explanatory. To be invested between 1 and 2 hours including a visit to the rooms with the physical finds. Advise.
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Jul 14, 2024
Video experience and museum of the Hagia Sophia - interesting but pricey! - The museum is an immersive video experience where you are led from room to room by a guide whilst a video plays, followed by an exhibition of various fragments and artefacts from Hagia Sophia.
The video tour itself is well made and informative for those who do not know the history of the building. The display of artefacts is more along the lines of a traditional museum and, for me, was more interesting.
All that said, the entry price is 25€ per person which, for a couple, comes to 50€ total, so is pretty expensive for what it is.
All in all, I would suggest visiting here either if you are a die-hard fan of the building and want to see the artefacts at the end, or otherwise have some spare time and cash to spend and are looking for an introduction to the building, but otherwise would suggest giving this a miss and just going straight to the building - it has an audioguide and whilst also 25€ entry, is much more worth the price.
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May 18, 2024
Cute but maybe too fast - Entrance ticket with visit to the mosque €47.50, expensive for what is offered. The visit lasts half an hour with audio guide but you are not free to manage your time because being in a group you are moved from one room to another by a boy in the room. So you don't have time to see everything carefully. Explained appropriately but perhaps could have been more in depth.
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Jul 21, 2024
It is NOT worthy - Huge technological display with dismal aesthetics that relates the history of the temple Hagia Sophia with relative disregard for historical neutrality. It is followed by a small collection of artifacts. It would be fine for 200-350 TRY, but for 810 TRY (23€ in the time of writing) it is absolutely not worthy. On the other hand, my year and a half old kid was delighted by the projections.
SPOILERS
The worst are the latins (Western Europeans), of whom the Venetian were the greatest enemies of Hagia Sophia (sic.); the greeks were ok: the destruction of the first mosaics wasn't a big problem and in the Great
Schism the catholics are depicted much angrier than the their orthodox counterpart; and the otomans were, of course, peachy: the great keepers of the temple and to whom we have to thank for its conservation of +500 years. They acknowledge, just glacing, the coverage of the images of the church.
The cherry on top is the last artifact: the presidential decree of 2020 that reverts the space to a functional mosque in one of the many populist policies of the current president RT Erdogan (as another example, at the time of writing, the 100 years of the Turkish Republic are celebrating, and Erdogan's face is constantly seen next to the founding M.K. Atatürk)
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Jul 9, 2024
Expensive for what it is but still somewhat informative/interesting - The actual exhibit section of the museum was quite interesting. Also the video experience was quite informative which was nice. However, I would have rather spent my time in other ways and given that I didn’t know what I was getting myself into I was a bit disappointed, especially given that it was quite expensive at 25€.
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Sep 19, 2024
Very disappointing experience and very expensive - We were very disappointed with this experience. It cost about $29/ person... no senior discount available. You got inside with a group of 15 people, and you listen to a high-level view of the history of the cathedral. It was very difficult to hear the speaker on the devices because the music and sound effects were too loud. You walk through about 10 rooms and hear a little history about each period of time. I would have preferred to see the movie in a room and then go see the artifacts. The museum was also very disappointing. There were very few items to see from the Haj Sophia. Save your money and just go to the cathedral and read up about the history on your own.
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May 14, 2024
Not a museum - Not really a museum. An “immersive video” experience, where you are led room to room to watch videos that look like they were in a 1990s computer game. The sound effects were shockingly loud. Also quite expensive.
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