Hagia Sophia Trivia
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44 free Hagia Sophia trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Hagia Sophia trivia for travellers, Byzantine history buffs and anyone who has stood under that dome and wondered how it stays up. The quiz starts with the two churches that burned on the site before Justinian I ordered a third in 532, the mathematician and geometer he hired, the ten thousand workers, the boast about Solomon, and the earthquake that brought the first dome down twenty years later. From there it follows nine centuries as the cathedral of Constantinople: iconoclasm, the baptism of Olga of Kiev, the runic graffiti left by Varangian guards, the 1054 excommunication that split the churches, the Fourth Crusade's mules in the sanctuary, and the doge buried in the gallery. Later rounds cover 1453 and the conversion by Mehmed the Conqueror, the minarets and buttresses added by Mimar Sinan, the Fossati brothers' restoration and their giant calligraphic medallions, Atatürk's museum, the wishing column, the Empress Zoe and Deësis mosaics, and the 2020 reversion to a mosque. Questions run from easy to expert and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Istanbul, Turkey and Byzantine Empire quizzes.
30 of 44 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01With some 10,000 workers, how long did Justinian's Hagia Sophia take to build?
6 years
6 years, near enough: Justinian started work only weeks after the old church burned down in 532 and inaugurated its replacement on 27 December 537.
Q 02Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles, who designed Hagia Sophia for Justinian, were primarily what?
geometers
Geometers by training: Anthemius wrote a treatise on burning mirrors, and is said to have faked an earthquake in a rival neighbour's house by piping steam under the floor.
Q 03What does the name 'Hagia Sophia' mean?
Holy Wisdom
Hagia Sophia is Greek for Holy Wisdom, a title of Christ rather than a saint's name; the neighbouring older church Hagia Irene means Holy Peace.
Q 04Hagia Sophia's second church burned to the ground in January 532 during which uprising?
the Nika riots
The Nika riots took their name from the chant of 'Nika', 'Win!', raised by chariot-racing fans in the Hippodrome next door, whose rival factions united against Justinian.
Q 05On seeing the finished Hagia Sophia, Justinian is said to have declared he had surpassed which biblical king?
Solomon
Justinian is said to have exclaimed 'Solomon, I have outdone thee' at the dedication, setting his church against Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem.
Q 06Hagia Sophia's best-known resident, Gli, stroked by Barack Obama in 2009, was what kind of animal?
A cat
A cat: Gli was born in the building in 2004, and when it reopened for Muslim prayer officials promised she could stay, which she did until she died at 16.
Q 07After an earthquake brought down Hagia Sophia's first dome in 558, how was its replacement built differently?
Taller and steeper
Taller and steeper: Isidorus the Younger, nephew of one of the first architects, raised and ribbed the new dome because the shallow original had pushed its supporting piers outward.
Q 08What are the four curved triangular supports carrying Hagia Sophia's main dome called?
pendentives
Pendentives, the four spherical triangles between the arches, let Hagia Sophia's round dome sit on a square bay; Ottoman mosques copied the device a millennium later.
Q 09Hagia Sophia's great dome seems to float because its base is ringed by forty of what?
Arched windows
Arched windows: the light pouring through makes the masonry seem to dissolve, so that one sixth-century writer said the dome hung from heaven; its crown is some 56 m above the floor.
Q 10The purple porphyry in Hagia Sophia, a stone prized by emperors, was quarried in which land?
Egypt
Egypt supplied the porphyry, but the old tale that the church's green columns were taken from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus is a later legend, not fact.
Q 11Hagia Sophia's floor is mostly Proconnesian marble, quarried on an island in which sea?
the Sea of Marmara
The Sea of Marmara holds Proconnesus, now Marmara Island; green marble bands cross the floor's grey-veined white slabs, and they were called rivers and marked places in the church's processions.
Q 12Which word for someone who attacks cherished beliefs comes from the Byzantine movement that stripped Hagia Sophia's images after 726?
Iconoclast
Iconoclast comes from the Greek for 'image-breaker': the movement began under Emperor Leo III and lasted, with one pause, until 843; only then did figures of Christ and the saints return to the church's walls.
Q 13Which Rus' prince is said to have chosen Orthodoxy after his envoys described their awe at Hagia Sophia?
Q 21Hagia Sophia's 11th-century gallery mosaic shows Christ flanked by Constantine IX and which empress?
Zoe
Zoe married three emperors in turn, and the emperor's head and name in the panel were reworked, probably to swap an earlier husband for Constantine IX.
Q 22Empress Irene, shown with blond plaits in Hagia Sophia's Comnenus mosaic, was born Princess Piroska of which kingdom?
Hungary
Hungary: Piroska, a daughter of King Ladislaus I, was renamed Irene when she settled in Constantinople as John II Comnenus's bride, and the Orthodox Church now venerates her as a saint.
Q 23Visitors to Hagia Sophia's 'wishing column' make a wish by turning which finger in its worn hole?
Thumb
Vladimir the Great
Vladimir the Great's envoys, the Primary Chronicle says, reported of the service they saw in the cathedral: 'We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth.'
Q 14Which Rus' ruler was probably baptised in Hagia Sophia's baptistery in the 950s, taking the name Helena?
Olga of Kiev
Olga of Kiev, remembered for her bloody revenge on the tribe that killed her husband, came to Constantinople as regent for her son and is now venerated as a saint.
Q 15The architect Trdat, hired to repair Hagia Sophia's dome after the 989 earthquake, came from which land?
Armenia
Armenia: Trdat, builder of the cathedral at Ani, rebuilt the fallen western arch and part of the dome so solidly that his work still stands.
Q 16The delivery of a papal excommunication in Hagia Sophia in 1054 is considered the start of what?
the East–West Schism
The East–West Schism is dated from July 1054, when Cardinal Humbert, envoy of Pope Leo IX, laid a bull excommunicating Patriarch Michael Cerularius on Hagia Sophia's altar.
Q 17Runic graffiti on Hagia Sophia's gallery parapets is believed to be the work of which unit?
the Varangian Guard
The Varangian Guard, the emperors' Norse bodyguard, is the likely culprit: one man scratched his name into the marble, and part of it, Halfdan, can still be read.
Q 18During which crusade was Hagia Sophia sacked and stripped of its treasures in 1204?
the Fourth
The Fourth Crusade's looters led mules and horses into the sanctuary to carry off its silver, the historian Niketas Choniates wrote, and stabbed those that slipped on the polished floor.
Q 19Enrico Dandolo, who led the 1204 sack of Constantinople and was buried in Hagia Sophia, was doge of which city?
Venice
Venice: its blind doge steered the crusaders onto Constantinople, died there in 1205 and was buried in the very church his army had looted, where a marble slab still carries his name.
Q 20In Hagia Sophia's Deësis mosaic, what are the two figures on either side of Christ doing?
Pleading for humanity
Pleading for humanity: the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist beg Christ for mercy at the Last Judgment; hidden under plaster in the mosque years, the mosaic was revealed again in the 1930s by restorers from an American institute.
Thumb: you press it into the hole and sweep your hand in a circle, because legend says the column has been damp since a saint appeared beside it and that its moisture can heal.
Q 24Days after taking Constantinople in 1453, the sultan attended which first service in Hagia Sophia?
Friday prayers
Friday prayers: the 21-year-old conqueror took the city on 29 May 1453 and worshipped there that same week, turning the fallen empire's chief cathedral into a mosque within days.
Q 25Which mosque, facing Hagia Sophia across the square, is better known to visitors as the Blue Mosque?
the Sultan Ahmed
The Sultan Ahmed Mosque went up across the square a thousand years after its neighbour, and its great dome ringed by half-domes shows how closely Ottoman builders studied the old church.
Q 26Which sultan brought two colossal candlesticks from his conquest of Hungary and set them beside Hagia Sophia's mihrab?
Suleiman the Magnificent
Suleiman the Magnificent destroyed Hungary's royal army at Mohács in 1526, and the bronze pair he carried off from Buda have flanked the prayer niche as trophies ever since.
Q 27What did the great Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan add to Hagia Sophia in the 1500s to keep it standing?
Stone buttresses
Stone buttresses: Sinan spent his career trying to outdo the old church's dome in his own mosques, yet he also shored up its walls and built two of its minarets.
Q 28Murad III had two huge Hellenistic urns brought to Hagia Sophia's nave from which ancient city?
Pergamon
Pergamon supplied both urns, each carved from a single block of stone; once in the mosque they were fitted with taps so that worshippers could draw water from them.
Q 29What did the Fossati brothers do with the mosaics they uncovered in Hagia Sophia?
Covered them again
Covered them again, after drawing them: many of those mosaics have since been lost, so for some images the brothers' sketches are the only record left.
Q 30Besides Allah, Muhammad and his two grandsons, whose names are on the Hagia Sophia's eight giant medallions?
the first four caliphs
The first four caliphs, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali, complete the set, hung in the 1840s; the vast roundels hang beside Byzantine mosaics of saints and emperors, a pairing the interior is famous for.