IN-PERSON ISTANBUL HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

Where does heritage begin—and where does it fracture into new narratives? This question gains particular resonance in contemporary Istanbul, where overlapping cultural pasts and imagined urban futures converge in one of the city’s most symbolically charged sites: Hagia Sophia. Today, the monument’s history unfolds not only within its living, politically significant sacred space, but also in a neighboring experiential museum that reinterprets its past through immersive technologies. In this setting, heritage is reframed rather than simply retold; the monument’s multi-layered history becomes a curated narrative object, exposing a disjunction between embodied religious practice and technologically mediated representation. While Hagia Sophia remains embedded in ritual, authority, and everyday urban life, the Hagia Sophia Experience Museum stages a carefully orchestrated storyline through scenography, digital reconstructions, and affective design. Between these two spaces, heritage emerges as a dynamic and contested field—shifting between lived experience, curated interpretation, and the city’s shifting political and cultural imaginaries. This juxtaposition invites visitors to reconsider how history is constructed, abstracted, and mobilized in the present. Situated within the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Historical Peninsula, this paper employs the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach not as a prescriptive tool but as a conceptual lens to examine how heritage, culture, and urban life intersect in moments of rapid transformation. The Experience Museum, functioning as a parallel interpretive realm, demonstrates how heritage can be reassembled into a curated, affect-driven spectacle distinct from the politically charged realities outside its doors. By analysing this dual landscape of meaning-making, the paper contributes to broader debates on how cultural pasts and urban futures are negotiated and performed in global cities.