Like a toad with a high vaulted back and thick-legged squats the Hagia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom, “on the old city of Kayseri. With its shimmering reddish brick and later in Ottoman times grown four minarets heard the good 1400 years old building is still the most influential apparitions of the silhouette of Ä°stanbul and is today a landmark of the city.
The antiquity of Christendom’s largest church, from the outside a bit crass acts, offers visitors once they enter the nave, a completely different picture: Instead of massive and stocky, appears in the mighty dome light to float highs, as the earthly mirror of the sky. A wreath of 40 windows in the bottom of the dome, the sunlight so skillfully into the interior of the large building that the impression of weightlessness will be further strengthened. This even after 1400 years, yet extremely impressive effect was the architect of Anthemios Tralles and Isidoros of Miletus achieved, that they are the main dome by further abstützten hemispheres and the mighty pillars, the weight of the dome field, in the aisles exiled. This has created a huge free funds ship. This architecture for the then revolutionary approach was later also a model of the mosques of Istanbul and the Hagia Sophia opposite the Blue Mosque.
Contracting for the construction of the Hagia Sophia was the Emperor Justinian, the church after a sensational short construction period of only 5 years and 10 months on 27 December inaugurated 537. The static experiment of 31 m in diameter big dome, the apex 49 m above the ground floated, but soon came to its limits. Several minor earthquakes caused the dome cracks and got 21 years after its completion, collapsed in May 558. Since both architects were already dead, instructed the 76-year-old nephew Justinian the Isidoros’, Isidoros younger, with the reconstruction of the dome. These were the outer pillars reinforces what to outwardly urged the impression, and the dome again to 7 m respectively. This form of the dome, 56 meters high and only from the outside pillars further supported, is preserved. No other Byzantine or Ottoman dome ever again reached such heights.
The current facilities inside the Hagia Sophia, 1935 at the museum explains, is determined by the 500 years in which they served as a mosque. Three days after the conquest of Constantinople in the year 1453 was the imperial church to the mosque of Sultan said. In the apse of the church is the Mihrab, pointing to Mecca the prayer niche. The right of this is the minibar, the pulpit of the imam. Most notable are the 7.5 m in diameter large wooden signs at the height of the galleries, calligraphy as the eight most sacred name of Islam bear. Upon closer inspection, however, you will have many more works of art from the Byzantine era recognize, mainly remnants of the famous mosaics. The first of them are already in the vestibules to the main building, the best known is a mosaic from the 10th Century directly over the so-called Kaisertor. It shows the enthroned Christ. Other mosaics are located in the apse and on the walls of the galleries, which, incidentally, both Byzantine and Ottoman period in which women were banned. The impressive mosaic motif is a devotional image, a Deesis that Jesus with Mary and John the Baptist shows.
In the Garden of Hagia Sophia are three mausoleums, in which the sultans Mehmet III., Selim II and Murat III. their final resting place is found. Moreover, around the Hagia Sophia in the’80s remains of the foundations of the predecessor church from the 5th Century have been uncovered. Open Tuesday to Sunday from 9 to 16 clock, the gallery is 9 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. and clock 13 to 15 clock open, admission costs about 12 euros.
