On June 26, 1996, we visited the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.  Let me give you a short history of the city.  The occupation of this city goes back to pre-historic times.  The city began as an ancient Greek colony and was called Byzantium around the 7th Century B.C.  It had an agora along with at least three temples.  Later the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus expanded it beyond the Greek acropolis by going further inland.  He built walls and this expansion was known as Severus City.  The turning point came when Constantine the Great shifted the capital of the Empire to Constantinople.  The Roman Empire was weakening in the west and he decided to rebuild it.  In 313 A.D. he signed the Edict of Milan, which proclaimed religious tolerance in the land.  In 330 A.D. the city was inaugurated and became a Christian city.  The revival of the Roman Empire came with Christianity’s expansion towards the west.  In 395 A.D. the Roman Empire officially divided east and west.

In the 6th Century, Justinian took over the throne and Hagia Sophia was built as an imperial church.  What Justinian had in mind was the same as Constantine’s.  He wanted to restore Christianity in the west and the Ravenna building program was a big part of that.  His campaign was set upon perfecting a formula for a domed centralized space for the church.  The longitudinal axis of the basilica was dissolved to give rise to the vertical emphasis above.

Here at Hagia Sophia, we see a perfect synthesis of the basilica and dome.  This church form continued in the eastern part of the Empire.  The west continued to keep its basilica type, which evolved into the Romanesque and Gothic styles of architecture you see today.  It was a remarkable sight to see the longitudinal directionality towards the apse coupled with the vertical symbolic axis up the dome.

The original dome collapsed because it was too shallow.  You can compare it with the Pantheon.  The structural system has 4 huge piers and arches spanning these piers.  Buttresses take the thrust.  It is similar to St. Peter’s Church in Rome with its courtyard and series of narthexes.  Marble columns were brought from everywhere in the Empire.

The interior decoration came out of a mosaic program of fragmented, light and golden tesserae.  The apse figure mosaic of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child is from the 9th Century.  As this was an imperial church, there was no christian modesty here.  The imperial family flanking the religious figures was part of the imperial propaganda.

Our eyes continued to move upwards.  We noted that the upper parts were reserved for women.  The quality of light and perforations can be compared to Sinan’s mosques.  The columns have basket capitals and ionic volutes – solid and similar to San Vitale.

The sketch to the left is of Hagia Sophia.  The one to the right is of the “Blue Mosque” – also visited on that day.