Justinian I, one of the earliest Byzantine rulers, ordered the architects Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus to design Hagia Sophia in the heart of what was then Constantinople. Justinian was a prolific builder, and during his long reign from A.D. 527 to 565 he commissioned several hundred religious spaces and public structures across Europe. (...)
Justinian I, one of the earliest Byzantine rulers, ordered the architects Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus to design Hagia Sophia in the heart of what was then Constantinople. Justinian was a prolific builder, and during his long reign from A.D. 527 to 565 he commissioned several hundred religious spaces and public structures across Europe. Hagia Sophia, Greek for “Divine Wisdom,” replaced an earlier basilica with the same name; the second church, built from A.D. 532-537, was by far the Emperor’s most ambitious architectural project. The central dome of the cathedral measures 107 ft across and hovers 180 ft above the floor, encircled by 40 arched windows. Justinian himself acted as the dome’s conservator when he had it restored in A.D. 563 after fire and earthquakes damaged the building. In its original form, Hagia Sophia had no figural mosaics, perhaps due to prevailing notions of iconoclasm at the time. From the 9th-14th centuries, however, successive generations of Byzantine monarchs filled the curving walls with imperial portraits and religious iconography. For nearly a millennium, the church functioned as the hub of Eastern Christianity and the location of the Orthodox Patriarch, the counterpart to the Pope in Rome. Hagia Sophia was transformed into a mosque after the fall of the city to the Ottoman invaders in 1453. Hagia Sophia became a secular museum following the creation of the Republic of Turkey in the early 20th century.
