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My guide’s tutelage was yet another reason for me to pity Hagia Sophia. Even where tours are concerned, it suffers like no other building on earth. Barlak had few things to say about the magnificent mosaics for which Hagia Sophia is renowned—although he did point out that the eyes of Jesus in the Deesis Mosaic follow you as you walk away. He said little about the mosaics because he believed that I, like most Americans, would be bored. He might have been right. Byzantine mosaics are grim pieces of work, and we Americans prefer lighthearted art.

Mustafa Akkaya, the director of the museum, has a different theory as to why mosaics haven’t caught our collective attention. (I didn’t want to torture him by pointing out that Americans do like mosaic tiles—if they’re part of bathroom or kitchen decor.) “The art you love is easily transportable,” he said. “Mosaics cannot be lifted and taken away.” I amended his theory to suggest that Americans tend to value only what they have a reasonable expectation of buying, and the finest mosaic art tends to be firmly affixed to walls.

Hagia Sophia’s mosaics are primarily fragments. The few that survive have been restored, to the credit of Turkish administrators. Most are in the galleries, reached by walking up a crude curving ramp. (The Christian emperors rode up in chariots pulled by ponies.) I like to imagine what Hagia Sophia must have looked like a thousand years ago, when the interior was surely a wonder unequaled anywhere on earth. Apparently, the marble floors were once highly polished and the walls ablaze from the golden tiles. Now the museum is gloomy. I’ve always been astonished at how little light is allowed to enter houses of worship, when one would expect the opposite.

I knocked on Christian doors, curious to learn if the loss of Hagia Sophia still rankled, or perhaps even burned. The Ecumenical Patriarchate was not the only organization reluctant to speak on the record. The mere fact that after millennia the Church of Divine Wisdom can inspire so much discomfiture was a revelation.

I went to the Roman Catholic Church of St. Anthony three times before a member of the clergy would see me. On my second visit, a priest thrust a promotional pamphlet into my hands and firmly shut the door in my face. I imagined him standing with his back to the door, breathing deeply, praying that the inquisitor would not return to torment him yet again. On my third visit, I cornered a kindly priest who took me to a small room, folded his hands, and told me that he would speak to me if I did not use his name or his words. He said that the controversy over Hagia Sophia was a Greek Orthodox matter, not a Roman Catholic one. His nervousness disappeared only when I told him that the Patriarchate didn’t seem any more interested in speaking openly about Hagia Sophia than he did. At this, he actually grinned.

Several other church leaders did not return my calls after I left messages explaining the nature of my inquiries. The only one who welcomed me was the Reverend Benjamin van Rensburg of the Union Church of Istanbul, who pointed out that political realities made the designation of Hagia Sophia as a museum a sensible decision. He said that however controversial the matter might be today, it is not as serious as it was just after World War I, when the defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire made Muslims intensely concerned that Hagia Sophia would be reconsecrated as a church. Akkaya, the museum director, said that Ataturk’s decision to create a museum was one of the most important and critical moments in the Westernization of modern Turkey, because it allowed Hagia Sophia to represent two cultures and two religions. The accomplishment seems all the more noteworthy today, considering the deteriorating state of Muslim-Christian relations throughout the world.

I find myself standing pretty much alone among devout believers in Hagia Sophia because I can accept whatever religion it happens