Built in five years
In January 532 the Nika riot in Constantinople burned the city’s great church, already rebuilt once. Justinian decided to replace it with something without precedent. He chose two men known for their mathematics and mechanics more than for building, Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus. With thousands of workers and materials gathered from across the empire, the new church was consecrated on 27 December 537, less than six years later.
The monograms of Justinian and Theodora are carved on many capitals. The writer Procopius, who saw the building new, said the dome seemed not to rest on stone but to hang from heaven on a golden chain.
A dome over a vast hall
The plan joins two ideas: a long church for processions and a centrally planned space under a dome. The main dome, about 31 metres across and some 55 metres above the floor, rests on four great arches carried by massive piers. To east and west, two half-domes extend the space, and smaller half-domes open from them. The result is an enormous single interior, for nearly a thousand years among the largest in the world, and the widest dome of its time after the Roman Pantheon.
At the base of the dome, forty windows let in light all round. Seen from below, the ring of light hides the supports, which is why the dome appears to float.
The first dome was shallower and pushed hard on its supports. After earthquakes, part of it collapsed on 7 May 558. Isidore the Younger, nephew of the first architect, rebuilt it higher and steeper, and the church was dedicated again in 562. That dome, repaired after later partial collapses and supported by heavy buttresses, still stands.
The mosaics
Justinian’s church was decorated with gold mosaics and crosses, with few figures. Most of the figurative mosaics we see today were made after the end of Iconoclasm, the period when religious images were banned. In the apse, a Virgin and Child enthroned was unveiled in 867. In the galleries, mosaics show emperors and empresses offering gifts to Christ and the Virgin, among them the empress Zoe with her husband. The finest is the Deesis, made around 1261, where the Virgin and John the Baptist turn to Christ in prayer.
Visitors left their own traces. On a marble parapet in the gallery, someone carved runes, usually read as a name, Halfdan, probably a Scandinavian guard or traveller of the ninth or tenth century.
Cathedral, mosque, museum, mosque
For more than 900 years Hagia Sophia was the cathedral of Constantinople, the setting of imperial coronations and great feasts, the model for Byzantine art and architecture. After the Ottoman conquest on 29 May 1453, Sultan Mehmed II converted it into a mosque. Minarets were added, the mosaics were gradually plastered over or left in shadow, and a mihrab facing Mecca, a minbar and later large calligraphic roundels were installed. The architect Sinan strengthened the structure with buttresses in the sixteenth century, and the dome of Hagia Sophia became the model for the great Ottoman mosques of Istanbul.
In 1934 the government of the Turkish Republic made it a museum, opened in 1935, and many mosaics were uncovered. In July 2020 a ruling of Turkey’s Council of State annulled the 1934 decision, and Hagia Sophia became a mosque again; the first Friday prayers were held on 24 July 2020. It remains open to visitors outside prayer times, and the figurative mosaics on the ground floor are covered or kept in shadow during prayers.
Where to see it
Hagia Sophia stands in Sultanahmet, in the historic centre of Istanbul, opposite the Blue Mosque and a short walk from the Basilica Cistern. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Historic Areas of Istanbul.
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Historic Areas of Istanbul”.
- Procopius, Buildings 1.1.
- R. J. Mainstone, Hagia Sophia: Architecture, Structure and Liturgy of Justinian’s Great Church (London, 1988).
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline, “Hagia Sophia, 532-37”.
- Reuters and BBC (July 2020) on the Council of State ruling and the first prayers.
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