Salonica - Ste Sophia Church

(Local Name: Ayía Sofía) Ayía Sofía, at the east end of Hermes Street (Odós Ermoú) in Salonica is an important Christian Church. This three-aisled domed cruciform church on an almost exactly square plan dates from the eighth century. In the ninth and 10th centuries, after the end of the iconoclastic conflict, it was decorated with new figural mosaics, including the Mother of God in the apse (replacing the earlier Cross) and a magnificent representation of the Ascension in the dome. Also notable are the capitals of the columns, which are believed to have come from a fifth century building.

From 1204 to 1430 the church of Ayía Sofía was the town's metropolitan church or cathedral (now the Mitrópolis, to the south, in the street of that name). During the Turkish period it became a mosque, the Aya Sofya Camii. It was restored after a fire in 1890 and survived the great fire of 1917 unscathed. A graceful Turkish porch was destroyed in an Italian air raid in 1941, and the church was badly damaged in the 1978 earthquake.