Istanbul: Hagia Sophia History and Experience Museum

Posted By : TinettoLove
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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Posted On : 2024-05-18 07:52:40

Posted By : Andrew M
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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Posted On : 2024-05-14 12:21:52

Posted By : TripMatador
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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Posted On : 2024-05-06 06:08:43

Posted By : swingingsultan
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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Posted On : 2024-04-27 06:30:21

Posted By : F9331EKmichelleh
This isn't a museum. It's a collection of badly done videos with special effects that play in one room after the next, extremely loudly (you can barely hear what they're saying in your own headset because of the corresponding museum blaring in each room), and in the dark, with the staff moving you through and making you stand in certain spots with a wave of their arms (else you might stand in front of the projected video feed and be blinded (The staff, however, are dressed very well). Save yourself a lot of money and watch a documentary. You'll learn a lot more. It cost almost as much as the Hagia Sofia itself, probably to pay for the obviously overly grand buidling that holds nothing (really, nothing!) There are a few artifacts here, but not enough to make the visit worth it or eve really to fill a whole room. Oh, and a cat snuck into the third floor in the antiseptic space with the video roaring at us. The cat was by far the best part.
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Posted On : 2024-04-26 10:53:18

Posted By : Rudi160
The museum may have a good idea, but the execution is terrible. 50 euros (2 people) for what is on offer is simply a disgrace. The digital offering is not a museum, but a picture book for small children. First, information for seniors: There is NO seating during the entire visit. When I complained about this later, an employee told me "you should have told us that". Am I clairvoyant?? NO CHAIR in the entire museum!! You are shoved into an overcrowded elevator and taken to the 3rd floor. There you are called through dark, even black corridors until you reach the first room. Floor lighting so that you can see where you are stepping is unknown. This goes on several times. The films have barely finished when you are called into the next room, which is sometimes still dark. You feel like a hunted animal and not like you are in a museum. During the films you stand against the opposite wall. With today's resources, they could have made a lot more of it. See important museums in other large sites. Things get better on the bottom floor. Beautiful exhibits, e.g. Arabic calligraphy, but far too expensive for 50 euros. Tourist rip-off.
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Posted On : 2024-04-17 15:02:00

Posted By : jonathansA3881XW
An excellent and immersive museum! The videos are excellent! Make sure you add this on with your main ticket. The museum exceeded all our expectations to what we thought it would be like.
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Posted On : 2024-04-08 09:39:47

Posted By : DianneMuriel
This was a let down after paying 25 euros. It's mainly a cinematic experience with over the top boom boom sound effects, you get shepherded in an assembled group from room to room. Then let loose at the end to see some various objects. I left feeling quite annoyed with the visit. Okay at 10 - 15 euros but what is on offer is price gouging.
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Posted On : 2024-04-07 10:48:16

Posted By : janehZ9791BP
This is not a museum. It is one of those digital vidso 'experiences' projected onto a wall, with loud dramatic music and narrative. And for this, you will pay 900 lira. It is evidently privately owned, not included in the Istanbul Museum Pass. Avoid this rip-off. Much better just to see the real Hağıa Sophia a few hundred feet away!!
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Posted On : 2024-04-06 08:23:57

Posted By : espenh476
You cannot go by your self, you are forced to wait until there are enough persons to make a group of 10. Then you are hurried through, from room to room. The tour is informative, but the sound from the loudspeakers is so insanely loud, that you have to turn the volume on your audioguide to max to be able to hear what is beeing said. This ruined the whole experience for me. Stressful!
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Posted On : 2024-03-31 09:29:46