Also known as the Knights Hospitaller, or simply the Hospitallers, the Order can originally trace its roots back as an offshoot of a Benedictine hospital established by Italian merchants in 1023 CE, after receiving permission from the Caliph Ali az-Zahir of Egypt to rebuild on the site of the Saint John the Baptist monastery destroyed almost twenty years earlier. Their mandate encompassed caring for the poor, sick, and injured faithful who made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
After the Western Christian conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade, the organization …

At the height of its power, the Athenian Empire constructed the Parthenon to replace an older temple destroyed during the Persian invasion of 480 BCE. Built atop the Athenian Acropolis, it was dedicated to the city’s patron goddess Athena. Completed in 438 BCE, the building is considered one of the most important surviving examples of Classical Greece, and culmination of the Doric order and the namesake columns that line the temple.

However like most Greek temples of the time, the Parthenon found itself in use as the treasury, and even as …

Named for Jean Parisot de la Valetta who led the successful defense of the island from an Ottoman invasion in 1565 CE, the official name given by the Hospitaller’s was Humilissima Civitas Valleta – Most Humble City of Valletta – but given their desire to see the city realized as an artist’s masterpiece, the nickname Superblissima – Most Proud – used by the ruling European houses of the time, seems more apt.

Colloquially known as Il-Belt in Maltese – The City – Valletta is the capital of Malta. The name …

Our third port of call for the cruise this past November was the small archipelago state of Malta off the coast from Sicily in the middle of the Mediterranean. And having done our research, our first stop there while we were in at Valletta, was the Knights of Malta’s conventual church, St. Johns Co-Cathedral.
Following the conquest of the Holy Land by Islamic forces, the city was bequeathed to the Order of the Knights Hospitaller to safeguard the Catholic faith and Europe from the Ottoman Empire. Inhabited by noblemen from the …

The conquest of Constantinople by Sultan Mehmed II in 1453 CE saw the Hagia Sophia pillaged as the invaders believed it to contain the greatest treasures of the city, and became as a result the focal point of the siege. Unfortunately the church was being used as a refuge for those unable to contribute in the city’s defense, and congregants who had gone to the basilica to pray. Those not slaughtered as the invaders battered their way in, were enslaved and divided amongst the Ottomans.
Immediately after the conquest the Hagia …

Constructed between 532 and 537 CE by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, the Hagia Sophia – from the Greek meaning “Church of the Holy Wisdom of God” – for over 900 years served as the Orthodox basilica for the Greek Patriarchal of Constantinople, and the religious focal point of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
And for that time it was the largest cathedral in the world.

Famous for its massive dome, some consider it to be the epitome of Byzantine architecture, even to have changed the history of architecture itself, and despite the …