Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia, Turkish Ayasofya, Latin Sancta Sophia, also called Church of the Holy Wisdom or
Church of the Divine Wisdom, cathedral built at Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) in the 6th
century ce (532537) under the direction of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. By general
consensus, it is the most important Byzantine structure and one of the worlds great monuments.

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul.

Richard T. Nowitz/Corbis
The Hagia Sophia combines a longitudinal basilica and a centralized building in a wholly original
manner, with a huge 105-foot (32-metre) main dome supported on pendentives and two semidomes,
one on either side of the longitudinal axis. In plan the building is almost square. There are three
aisles separated by columns with galleries above and great marble piers rising up to support the
dome. The walls above the galleries and the base of the dome are pierced by windows, which in the
glare of daylight obscure the supports and give the impression that the canopy floats on air.
The Hagia Sophia was built in the remarkably short time of about six years, being completed in 537
ce. Unusual for the period in which it was built, the names of the buildings architectsAnthemius
of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletusare well known, as is their familiarity with mechanics and
mathematics. The Hagia Sophia is a component of a UNESCO World Heritage site called the
Historic Areas of Istanbul (designated 1985), which includes that citys other major historic
buildings and locations.

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The original church on the site of the Hagia Sophia is said to have been built by Constantine I in
325 on the foundations of a pagan temple. It was damaged in 404 by a fire that erupted during a riot
following the second banishment of St. John Chrysostom, then patriarch of Constantinople. It was
rebuilt and enlarged by the Roman emperor Constans I. The restored building was rededicated in
415 by Theodosius II. The church was burned again in the Nika insurrection of January 532, a
circumstance that gave Justinian I an opportunity to envision a splendid replacement.


Night view of the Hagia Sophia, Istanbul.
Geoff Tompkinson/GTImage.com (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
The structure now standing is essentially the 6th-century edifice, although an earthquake caused a
partial collapse of the dome in 558 (restored 562) and there were two further partial collapses, after
which it was rebuilt to a smaller scale and the whole church reinforced from the outside. It was
restored again in the mid-14th century. For more than a millennium it was the Cathedral of the
Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. It was looted in 1204 by the Venetians and the
Crusaders on the Fourth Crusade. After the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II
had it repurposed as a mosque, with the addition of minarets (on the exterior, towers used for the
summons to prayer), a great chandelier, a mihrab (niche indicating the direction of Mecca), a
minbar (pulpit), and disks bearing Islamic calligraphy. Kemal Atatrk secularized the building in
1934, and in 1935 it was made into a museum. Art historians consider the buildings beautiful
mosaics to be the main source of knowledge about the state of mosaic art in the time shortly after
the end of the Iconoclastic Controversy in the 8th and 9th centuries.