Everything You Need To Know About Hagia Sophia
Hagia Sophia, Turkish Ayasofya, Latin Sancta Sophia, also known as Church of the Holy wisdom or Church of the Divine wisdom, an essential Byzantine structure in Istanbul and one of the world’s super monuments. It become built as a Christian church within the sixth century CE (532–537) underneath the path of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. In next centuries it became a mosque, a museum, and a mosque again. The building displays the spiritual changes that have played out inside the region over the centuries, with the minarets and inscriptions of Islam as well as the lavish mosaics of Christianity.
The Hagia Sophia became built in the remarkably quick time of approximately six years, being finished in 537 CE. unusual for the period wherein it became constructed, the names of the building’s architects—Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus—are widely known, as is their familiarity with mechanics and arithmetic. The Hagia Sophia combines a longitudinal basilica and a centralized constructing in a completely unique way, with a large 32-metre (a hundred and five-foot) main dome supported on pendentives and two semidomes, one on both facets of the longitudinal axis. In plan, the constructing is sort of rectangular. There are three aisles separated through columns with galleries above and remarkable marble piers rising as much as support the dome. The partitions above the galleries and the base of the dome are pierced with the aid of windows, which in the glare of daylight obscure the supports and give the influence that the canopy floats on air.
The unique church on the site of the Hagia Sophia is said to have been ordered to be constructed by means of Constantine I in 325 on the foundations of a pagan temple. His son, Constantius II, consecrated it in 360. It turned into damaged in 404 through a fireplace that erupted throughout a rebellion following the second banishment of St. John Chrysostom, then patriarch of Constantinople. It changed into rebuilt and enlarged by the Roman emperor Constans I. The restored building changed into rededicated in 415 via Theodosius II. The church become burned again within the Nika rise up of January 532, a condition that gave Justinian I an opportunity to examine a wonderful replacement.
After the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II had it repurposed as a mosque, with the addition of a timber minaret (on the outdoors, a tower used for the summons to prayer), a high-quality chandelier, a mihrab (area of interest indicating the course of Mecca), and a minbar (pulpit). either he or his son Bayezid II erected the pink minaret that stands on the southeast corner of the shape. The unique timber minaret did no longer continue to exist. Bayezid II erected the slim white minaret on the northeast facet of the mosque. the 2 same minarets at the western facet were possibly commissioned by way of Selim II or Murad III and built by way of famend Ottoman architect Sinan inside the 1500s.
In 1934 Turkish Pres. Kemal Atatürk secularized the constructing, and in 1935 it was made into a museum. artwork historians remember the building’s beautiful mosaics to be the primary supply of understanding approximately the kingdom of mosaic art inside the time shortly after the give up of the Iconoclastic Controversy inside the 8th and 9th centuries. In 1985 the Hagia Sophia was certain an aspect of a UNESCO international historical past site called the ancient areas of Istanbul, which includes that city’s other predominant ancient buildings and locations. Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made the debatable choice in 2020 to transform the building lower back right into a mosque. Islamic prayers have been held quickly after the declaration with curtains in part concealing the constructing’s Christian imagery. As Turkey’s maximum famous visitor vacation spot, the Hagia Sophia remained open to site visitors.
