Diving the depths of a great cathedral

Just like a Dan Brown thriller only true! The vast, splendid Hagia Sophia (which has featured in a couple of Dan’s novels), which is now a museum, sits atop an ancient series of underground tunnels said to connect the cathedral with the Basilica Cistern Princes’ Islands and the Topkapi Palace. Director Göksel Gülensoy has enjoyed a long-standing love of the Hagia Sophia, and decided to embark on a scuba diving expedition under the building to unlock some of her ancient secrets.

The vast interior of Hagia Sophia

His 50-minute film, “In the Depths of Hagia Sophia” (Link to film trailers) shows a side of the historic structure that has never before been explored in depth, let alone filmed. Along with two divers and four spelunkers, he delved into the mysterious depths to see what, exactly, Hagia Sophia was hiding.

Squeezing into the bowels of the cistern

The team began by opening the reservoir doors in the main hall; the two doors had both been shut for quite some time, and never before had a diver been allowed into the reservoir. After studying the small first chamber, the team moved on to the larger second reservoir. There they found flasks thought to have been left behind by British soldiers in 1917, a chain which may have contained a prisoner at one time, and various other bits and pieces of the cathedral. They then moved into the two passageways beneath the huge cathedral, finding sealed passages, a graveyard full of children’s bones, and the burial chamber of Hagia Sophia’s first priest. They found that the passages long thought to lead to the Basilica Cistern and Princes’ Islands were non-existent. Every person who dove beneath Hagia Sophia that day underwent a full-body X-ray to prove that no artifacts had been removed from the site.

Hagia Sophia in Istanbul

This would be a great premise for a new Matthew Reilly Scarecrow or Ascham adventure.