Theodora is crowned Byzantine empress and marries then emperor Theophilos in the Hagia Sophia. She is credited with restoring orthodoxy and the icons.

Theodora, sometimes called Theodora the Armenian or Theodora the Blessed, was Byzantine empress as the wife of Byzantine emperor Theophilos from 830 to 842 and regent for the couple's young son Michael III, after the death of Theophilos, from 842 to 856. Theodora is most famous for bringing an end to the second Byzantine Iconoclasm (814–843), an act for which she is recognized as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Though her rule saw the loss of most of Sicily and failure to retake Crete, Theodora's foreign policy was otherwise highly successful; by 856, the Byzantine Empire had gained the upper hand over both the Bulgarian Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate, and the Slavic tribes in the Peloponnese had been forced to pay tribute, all without decreasing the imperial gold reserve.

The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, it endured until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. The term 'Byzantine Empire' was coined only after its demise; its citizens used the term 'Roman Empire' and called themselves 'Romans'.

Theophilos was Byzantine Emperor from 829 until his death in 842. He was the second emperor of the Amorian dynasty and the last emperor to support iconoclasm.

Hagia Sophia, officially the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque, is a mosque and former museum and church serving as a major cultural and historical site in Istanbul, Turkey. The last of three church buildings to be successively erected on the site by the Eastern Roman Empire, it was completed in AD 537, becoming the world's largest interior space and among the first to employ a fully pendentive dome. It is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and is said to have "changed the history of architecture". From its dedication in 360 until 1453 Hagia Sophia served as the cathedral of Constantinople in the Byzantine liturgical tradition, except for the period 1204–1261 when the Latin Crusaders installed their own hierarchy. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, it served as a mosque, having its minarets added soon after. The site became a museum in 1935, and was redesignated as a mosque in 2020. In 2024, the upper floor of the mosque began to serve as a museum once again.