Turkey | Istanbul | Hagia Sofia | Tomb of Enrico Dandolo

Wandered into Hagia Sofia in Istanbul to see the purported tomb of Enrico (Henrico) Dandolo. As most of you know, Dandolo was the Venetian doge who engineering the Fourth Crusade that resulted in the sack of Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1204. As John Julius Norwich put it in Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, volume three of his magisterial history of the Byzantine Empire:
There are few greater ironies in History than the fact that the fate of Eastern Christendom should have been sealed—and half of Europe condemned to some five hundred years of Muslim rule—by men who fought under the banner of the Cross. Those men were transported, inspired, encouraged, and ultimately led by Enrico Dandolo in the name of the Venetian Republic; and, just as Venice derived the major advantage from the tragedy, so she and her magnificent old doge must accept the responsibility for the havoc that they have wrought on the world. 
Interior of Hagia Sofia (click on photos for enlargements)
The tomb of Enrico (Henrico) Dandolo is on the second floor loge of Hagia Sophia
The tomb of Enrico Dandolo

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