5. Hagia Sophia & Basilica Cistern

Aya Sofia (Hagia Sophia in English) means holy wisdom in Greek, and was built in 537 by Emperor Justinian as an Orthodox Christian church in Constantinople, which was the capital of the Byzantine Empire. So it didn't have minarets back then, these were added in 1453 when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople and it became a 'jewel for the Muslim world' and became a mosque. The Ottomans made some changes to remove Christian features like the alter and the bells. 

In 1935, when Turkey became a nationalist secular republic (after WW1, I'll write about that in the Gallipoli posts), Ataturk (Mustafa Kemal) converted it to a museum. It still is, but in Turkey now there's a split happening between the people who want Turkey to remain secular and those who want it to become more Islamic. So there have been protests because some want it to be changed back into a mosque. 

The dome ceiling is huge, only the Pantheon in Rome is bigger. Helen Gardner, who wrote the Art textbook Mum used in high school said "Hagia Sophia's dome are formidable for any structure not built of steel".  The dome's built on pendentives to carry the weight (apparently when they were building it the dome kept collapsing!

So the walls are thick stone and it has 40 smaller windows. Here's the entrance - thick walls to hold the weight of the enormous dome. 

I loved the different hues and tones of the brown & grey stone, it would make for beautiful abstract designs. 

The small windows at the base of the main dome gave the interior a mystical feeling as the light beamed through. 

Byzantine art is stylised with a dynamic use of lines. These are frescos, but the circular dome here is Islamic because some of the Christian mosaics and frescos were painted over when Aya Sofia was converted to a mosque. 

The gold painted interior gave a majestic feeling to the echoing interior.

The symmetry, proportion, balance and harmony seen. (using my Art Principles of Design here to interpret the architecture!) The harmony creates a completeness and cohesion that aids in the feeling that the design is whole. 

Byzantine art has a dynamic use of line and flat colour, rather than form. The fabric clothing is shown by lines instead of tones and shades. This is a Christian mosaic which was covered in paint when the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople, but it was removed when Ataturk converted Hagia Sophia to a museum.  

 It's two stories high and to get to the top story. The gallery was to segregate the genders and social classes through both the Byzantine and Ottoman periods. To get up there we walked up cold, tunnels of thick stones, but the small windows gave some light - and also a photo opportunity! You can see how small the windows are because they're my size!

AND here's a short video of the interior. 

We left Aya Sophia after about 2 hours and went looking for the Basilica Cisterns. 

The Basilica Cistern is the largest of hundreds of ancient cisterns underneath Istanbul. It was built in the 6^th century by Byzantine Emperor Justinian 1.

It's very evocative and was used for in the James Bond film To Russia with Love. 

It provided a water filtration system for the Topkapi Palace. 
There are 336 marble columns with mostly ionic and corinthian capitals (but some doric ones)

 
Two columns had Medusa heads which they think came from a Roman temple nearby. One head was upside down and the other one was on its side. This might be to block the Gorgan's power. 

 

The cistern was forgotten about until a scholar who was researching antiquities was told by locals they could get water if they lowered a bucket down a hole, some even said they got fish! So it was re-discovered in 1600 but the Ottomans used it as a junk place and even threw corpses into it.