A muezzin has performed an Islamic call to prayer for the first time in 81 years in one of Istanbul’s iconic monuments, Hagia Sophia, famous for its grandiose dome.

The traditional call to prayer, the adhan, has been played from Hagia Sophia’s minarets for the last four years. However, the muezzin had chanted it from a prayer room, not from inside the historic landmark, which began as a church in 537. The cathedral was converted into a mosque in 1453, when the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople, and ending up as a museum in 1935.

Full story: rt.com