Hagia Sophia
The Emperor Justinian had the Church of Holy Wisdom built in five years. The dome floats 55 metres above the floor on four arches and pendentives, and the ring of windows at its base makes it seem to hang in the light. For almost a thousand years the church was the largest in the world, and it became a mosque in 1453.
The church on the site burned down during the Nika riots of 532, when the people of Constantinople rose against the Emperor Justinian. Once the revolt had been crushed, the emperor resolved to build something without equal. He chose not ordinary master builders but two learned men: Anthemius of Tralles, a mathematician and theorist, and Isidore of Miletus. Construction proceeded incredibly fast, and the church was consecrated in December 537. The walls are of brick with thick mortar joints, which made the structure elastic but also caused it to settle as the mortar dried. Columns of marble and porphyry were brought from all over the empire, some reused from older buildings. The walls were clad with marble from Proconnesus and other quarries, and thousands of workers were active at the same time.
Hagia Sophia unites two plans: the longitudinal basilica and the centrally planned church under a dome. The dome rests on four arches, and to the east and west the space is extended by two semi-domes, which in turn open into smaller exedrae. The central space is surrounded by aisles and by galleries on the upper floor, where the empress and the court could stand. The dome has forty ribs with a window between each. The walls are covered with marble slabs that have been split and laid in mirror image, so that the veining forms patterns. The original mosaics were mainly gold and crosses; the figures seen today, such as the Virgin and Child in the apse and the Deësis mosaic in the gallery, were added after Iconoclasm, from the 9th century onwards.
The first dome collapsed in 558 after earthquakes and was replaced by a higher and steeper one. Later collapses and repairs followed. The Crusaders plundered the church in 1204. When the Ottomans took the city in 1453 it was made a mosque; minarets, a mihrab and a minbar were added, and the architect Sinan strengthened the building in the 16th century. The large round discs with Arabic calligraphy date from the 19th century, when the Fossati brothers carried out a major restoration. The Republic made the building a museum in the 1930s, and in 2020 it became a mosque again. Hagia Sophia became the model for the Ottoman imperial mosques. For Swedish visitors there is a special detail: in the gallery someone has carved runes, probably a Norseman in the emperor’s service, a reminder of the Varangians.