(For the Hagia Sophia preview, please
click here.)
Istanbul, formerly known as
Constantinople, is a special city. Spread along the banks of the Bosphorus Strait and the Sea of Marmaris, it is the symbolic meeting
point of East and West, the city where two continents meet, blending
European and Asian styles, religions, and histories. It has
worshipped Roman Gods, been a centre of Christendom, and been the
centre of the Ottoman Empire. By no measures is this a common city;
appropriately at the heart of it, an uncommon building dwells. The
Hagia Sophia is a legendary building. A dominant part of the historic
skyline, it is a very able representative of its legendary city.
On a sunny Wednesday afternoon, I sat
with Danielle and Burness - two fellow World Wonder veterans - upon a
rooftop cafe and admired the bulky legend before us. There was no
doubt we were looking at a heavyweight contender. The Hagia Sophia is
a big boy. The central dome reaches a height of almost 56 metres and 32 metres in diameter. It sits atop a series of generously proportioned blocks
and half-domes, surrounded with supports and fat walls, a minaret
placed at each corner. It looks very, very solid. Tinted a faded
reddish colour, with bare stonework visible, it also looks old.
Burness and I sipped our £5 beers, Danielle sipped her £8 wine, but
it was the view we were paying for. Not just the Hagia Sophia: turn
our heads a little and the almost-equally gigantic Blue Mosque was
just a couple of hundred hops away; turn our heads back and the
sprawling complex of the Ottoman sultans' Topkapi Palace was just a
couple of hundred hops in the other direction. Wrapped around all these was
the Bosphorus as it turned into the Sea of Marmaris, with the varied masses of Istanbul's buildings piled atop
the city's various peninsulas fanning out across the waters. Some
cities are identikit grid-plan boulevard and blocks: Istanbul is not.
It has the jumbled, sprawling look of a city that has evolved in
spontaneous bursts over millennia.
The same could be said of the Hagia
Sophia. It very much wears its history heart-on-sleeve. Sure, it was
built in 537 AD but most of what we could see dates from other eras,
built in the aftermaths of great events. It started life as a
Byzantine church, but it was largely reconstructed in the early 13th
Century by Latin invaders from Venice, France, and the Holy Roman Empire. This brief Latin rule followed the
appalling pillage of the city that masqueraded as the 4th Crusade. From its founding as Constantinople in 330 AD to the 13th Century, the city had withstood something like 17 different sieges from all kinds of different attackers, but it didn't expect to fall victim to Christian Crusaders. The Crusaders had intended going to the Holy Land to fight infidel Muslims
but found themselves tearing apart a fellow Christian city instead. Well, oops. They showed their true colours by devouring the city of its wealth; the French knights took three-eighths of the treasure, said to be worth seven times the annual revenue of England at the time. The Hagia Sophia was likewise stripped of its treasures, and the Crusaders had a prostitute
dance on the altar. Nonetheless, it was a lucky break. The Latin empire
only lasted a couple of generations but brought in a greater
knowledge and experience of construction to stabilise the church,
which was crumbling after centuries of earthquakes. The buttresses -
massive external supports - are a very visible sign of this era.
The minarets, meanwhile, are clearly
from a different time: Islam wasn't even a concept when the Hagia Sophia was built. But in April 1453, the Ottoman Turks with 100,000
men and huge siege weaponry encircled Constantinople. The Byzantine
Greeks, a faded empire ever since the brief rule of the Venetians and their pals 200 years earlier, had just
7000 men across 14 miles of walls. They had no chance, but held on
for almost two months nonetheless. The people gathered inside their massive
church to pray one last time. The final Turkish assault began on
May 29th at 1.30am and the subsequent slaughter and plunder lasted the customary three days. The
Hagia Sophia was thoroughly pillaged and desecrated, those taking refuge inside killed, raped, or sold into slavery.
When
the 21-year-old Ottoman sultan, Mohammed II, rode into town, he was now the owner of the ancient capital of the Roman Empire. He renamed the city Istanbul, meaning "into the city", and ordered the
Hagia Sophia to be converted into a mosque, now called the Ayasofya
(both names mean "Holy Wisdom"). It was the only
church converted into a mosque - most of the others were destroyed,
with a few allowed to remain as churches (in later years, many of
them ended up being turned into mosques). He order the construction
of the first minaret - the odd-one-out red brick one. His son, Bayezid II, added a white marble one later in the century; two other marble minaret followed in the
16th century, built by the father of Ottoman architecture, Minar Sinan. If Sinan changed the look of the Hagia Sophia, he also used the Hagia Sophia to change the very face of Istanbul. All the grand mosques of Istanbul and beyond in the old Ottoman empire are inspired by the Hagia Sophia. If today, we think that the Hagia Sophia looks like a mosque, that's because mosques look like it.
The Hagia Sophia today is a museum,
joining the exalted ranks of many ancient edifices by becoming a
tribute to itself. In one sense, I find this a shame: it kind of
means the building's natural life has come to an end and it has
become a mere hotspot for tourists to come and gaze and take lots of
photos, perhaps stopping to ponder and say "this must have been
amazing back in the day". It's like having a stuffed dog and
telling friends, "Yeah, he used to be a wonderful pet." For 916 years the Hagia Sophia was a church (1093 years if you start counting from its first incarnation), and then another 478
years a mosque, and in both cases it served its function pretty damn
well. As a church it was a reflection of Constantinople as a
Christian city; as a mosque it was a reflection of Istanbul as a
Muslim city. In 1923 a man called Mustafa Kemal, but better known
as Ataturk ("Father of the Turks") came to power in and
he set the country up on its next phase. Looking to the West, he
separated religion from politics and made Turkey a secular country:
in 1932 the Hagia Sophia ceased to be a mosque and by 1935 was duly converted into a secular museum.
And in this sense, I find the Hagia Sophia's role as a museum not a
shame at all, it is entirely appropriate. It has moved on with its
city and nation. It continues to represent them well.
Calling the Hagia Sophia a museum is
probably a little misleading anyway. The Hagia Sophia is simply the
Hagia Sophia - it doesn't exactly have exhibits, it just has itself.
The people forming the thick queue pouring from the ticket desk out into Sultanahmet Park outside aren't waiting for half an hour for a museum,
they're waiting to look around the colossus in front of them. Many of
them, I would wager, don't know anything about it other than it's big
and old, and is the first attraction mentioned in their guidebook -
all very relevant criteria, I would point out, to a Wonder.
Danielle, Burness, and I sat at our
rooftop cafe two afternoons in a row, and over the couple of days it
was interesting to note their slow changes of view. It mirrored mine,
although mine spanned 13 years. In 2001, I visited Istanbul, seeing
both the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. They were superficial
visits, but the Blue Mosque made the better impression. That I
visited the Hagia Sophia in a foul mood, hungover, probably didn't
help. As any regular reader of this blog will know, I always advocate
visiting each Wonder twice, and so my first and second "official"
visits on these Wonder travels to both the Hagia Sophia and the Blue
Mosque were actually my second and third actual visits. Aided
by some historical appreciation of the Hagia Sophia, for me there was
no doubt early on that it was the true Wonder of Istanbul. It has a
commanding presence. But Danielle and Burness, initially, disagreed.
For them, the towering domes of the Blue Mosque were more impressive - it seemed brighter, and prettier.
But are Wonders judged on first
impressions? Of course not. And just as it had done so for me, for
both of them the Hagia Sophia's considerable personality won through
in the end.
Just seeing the Hagia Sophia isn't
enough, it's somewhere that really needs to be visited. And for 24
lira (£8) and counting (Turkish inflation is high), you can. After
you join a massive queue to get in. On the first day in the vicinity,
Danielle and I decided "nah..." and just did other stuff
instead. The next day, now with Burness in tow, the queue was just as
big - we realised we'd have to bite the bullet. Joining a thick mass
of people, we waited around half an hour before getting in. The whole
time I was wondering, "Is this going to be as stupidly packed as
Versailles?"
The answer is yes - but no. The Hagia
Sophia is a big tourist draw and it has enough about it
to keep the tourists there for a while. It packs in a hell of a lot
of people. But unlike, say, Versailles, that's not too big a problem.
Because, inside, the Hagia Sophia is cavernous. Even during our
visit, which had a large area sectioned off with a dome-high tower
of scaffolding, there was plenty of space. Whereas the arrival of a
tour group in Versailles would leave you with your body pressed
against the wall by a squabble of old people, the Hagia Sophia just
soaks them up. Versailles is a series of rooms,
whereas the Hagia Sophia is essentially one vast space.
It's so big that, no kidding, during our visit the Latvian president and a large entourage led by a guide wandered in, took a look around, and left, without getting in anyone's way. Except perhaps for Burness, as he was standing in a doorway when they appeared, being suddenly pushed aside by a marauding mass of besuited gentlemen.
It's so big that, no kidding, during our visit the Latvian president and a large entourage led by a guide wandered in, took a look around, and left, without getting in anyone's way. Except perhaps for Burness, as he was standing in a doorway when they appeared, being suddenly pushed aside by a marauding mass of besuited gentlemen.
From the outside, it's clear that it's a
pretty big building; from inside, it's something you can really sense. It's
one of these places you walk about with your neck craned. Just as the
outside is a product of the passing centuries, so is the inside. A lot has changed. Remember these cheeky Crusaders? Well, while they
may have strengthened the structure, they gutted the
inside. The Hagia Sophia used to be packed with treasures, and back
in medieval times there were few greater treasures than the holy
relics of saints. Pilgrims were spoilt for choice as to which saint's
body part they could pay homage to, with the head of of St Anne (Mary's mother), the blood and, um, milk of St Pantaleon, the skull of St John Chrysostom, and
the skull of John the Baptist. These were all premier grade relics. Well, the crusaders changed all that:
the above are all now scattered around Europe, and indeed my Wonders. Chartres Cathedral has St Anne's
head, the cathedral complex (of which the Leaning Power is part of) in Pisa has one of St John Chrysostom's skulls (he has four, apparently), and of course Amiens Cathedral is one of
the many places that now have the astonishingly prolific skull of John
the Baptist. St Mark's Basilica in Venice got the lion's share
however, with various relics and other riches, including the Hagia
Sophia's massive doors, and its famous four bronzes horses from
antiquity. If you want to get a glimpse into pre-crusader Hagia
Sophia, St Mark's is a good place to start.
So, the riches have gone, but many
things remain. And this is a great relief, and a surprise given that it
was turned into a mosque in the 15th Century. Islam doesn't go in for
figurative art, so if a church covered in pictures of Jesus and Mary
and other such people gets converted, you can be sure that these will
be the first thing to go. And they did - but not entirely. Although
all kinds of pictures and statues vanished, gold mosaics ranging from
various eras were whitewashed, but not
actually destroyed. In their place, Muslim calligraphy and geometric
patterns appeared. The mosaics were forgotten.
Then, in the 19th Century, the Ottoman
sultan of the time, Abdulmecid I, decided to make some changes. The empire
was liberalising, and he wanted to become more Western. New
European-style buildings were appearing; Istanbul was changing.
Cracks had appeared in the dome of the Hagia Sophia, and the emperor
was keen to avoid any kind of collapse which might echo his slowly
decaying empire. Two Swiss brothers - Gaspare and Giuseppe Fosatti - were given the
commission to fully restore the former church and current mosque. It
was in terrible shape, crumbling for centuries, with large holes in
the roof allowing birds to fly in, nest, crap everywhere, and cause the kind of disturbance you don't expect in a mosque. And
during their restoration they uncovered the old mosaics. Usually,
the discovery of Christian art in a mosque would mean their immediate
removal or destruction, but the sultan was an enlightened one, and he
allowed the brothers to simply cover up the mosaics once again, to
save them. When the Hagia Sophia was turned into a
museum in 1935, it was time for the mosaics to make a full
reappearance.
And that's what we find today, a huge interior with a fascinating blend of ancient Byzantine mosaic and Islamic art. The Muslim mihrab, the niche indicating the direction of prayer, is placed inside, but at curiously just off-centre angle, as the Hagia Sophia is aligned to face Jerusalem, but the direction of Mecca is a little different.
We also have weird angel things called seraphims side-by-side with massive Islamic medallions with the names of important Muslim figures. It's half church, half mosque, all Hagia Sophia.
And it looks great. Even if you know
nothing about the history, the sense of age and significance is
ever-present. There is an upper gallery than can be reached, allowing
great views down to the main hall, and a closer look at some of the
mosaics. It's simply fun to stroll about, being inside the building,
sensing the additional gravity a building of this kind has, that few
other places do. On this ground Byzantine kings and queens and
Ottoman sultans and Christian priests and Muslim clerics and
soldiers and crusaders and whores and presidents and popes and commoners from all
around the world and from all different eras have stood. The Hagia
Sophia has meant a lot of things to a lot of people from a lot of
different times.
Which is why it's such a terrible shame
that the audio tour is such a pile of bollocks. The Hagia Sophia has
such an immense history behind it that it deserves an audio tour that
does it justice. The current one does not, and it makes the cardinal
sin of making the Hagia Sophia boring. After quickly dispensing with
the history in the introduction, the rest of the tour is a tedious
trek looking at pictures and objects and listening to dull
explanations as to what they are, without ever really tying them
together. It's not a problem unique to the Hagia Sophia - many audio
tours and information boards seem to focus on interminably dull
architectural descriptions or series of dates when the majority of
people want to hear stories,
they want to have life breathed into the building. They also want
clarity. Sadly, the Hagia Sophia audio misses this on all counts.
It even manages to turn the Viking
graffiti into a routine description. Viking graffiti!
For what's it worth, it's on the upper level and sketched in runes any time from the 8th to 11th Centuries. The Byzantine Army had an elite unit called the Varangian Guards, mostly comprised of Scandinavians, and although it's not certain, the graffiti probably simply says something along the lines of "Arni made these runes." Well done, Arni.
In the end, of course, a Wonder is not
just about history. Otherwise a collection of total ruins would
qualify, just because a bunch of things once happened there. A Wonder is
also about how it looks, its grandeur, and the overall visual impact
it makes. Does the Hagia Sophia make the grade? Yes, it does. It
looks commanding. Even those who might think the Blue Mosque looks
prettier can't really argue that the Hagia Sophia is the city's star
attraction. It has the presence of something that has seen a lot of
change and has absorbed it. I like the fact that it's a bit of a
brute - this is not a delicate structure. It makes people seem small.
See if you can spot them in this photo (I'm assuming they were
supposed to be there).
But it does have some subtle features -
the Hagia Sophia can sip cocktails as well as downing pints of beer.
I love the irregularity of the one brick minaret. I love that when you
walk around the outside, it's such a higgledy-piggledy jumble of
walls and windows and buttresses. If you were to build a brand new Hagia Sophia from scratch, these quirks would never be included. I love the faded reddish tint, but
with the inset section of windows a brighter orange, flanked by two
walls. Other areas too, for no rhyme or reason, are a deeper orange -
it's a patchy-looking building. Are they going to give it a fresh
paint and make it all look the same? I sure hope not. I like a patchy Hagia
Sophia.
Legend has it that
when the Ottomans stormed into Constantinople, a few priests inside
the Hagia Sophia began praying. The walls of the buillding opened and
let them in, where they will remain until the Hagia Sophia becomes
Christian again. Will this ever happen? It's always tempting to think
that the status quo will remain, and the Hagia Sophia's life is now
frozen as a museum to itself. But its entire existence has been one
of flux, and who knows what the future will hold, or how the
structure itself will change as a result? That's one of the joys of
the Hagia Sophia - it follows its city.
Some
criteria then.
Size: 56 metres high and 135
metres wide in all, it's a squat lump of a building, a spread-out behemoth.
Engineering: It's a whole
mish-mash of efforts from across the centuries, some better than
others, but there's no doubt that building something of this size in the 6th Century in only five years was a truly breathtaking effort.
Even if it did partly fall down 21 years later. To have survived for
so long is testament to its bulk, some luck, but also some good
quality work.
Artistry: Inside, the remains of
original art lives on. On the outside, it's more about having a
commanding presence than finesse, but it looks great.
Age: 1476
years old, making it the oldest church, the oldest mosque, and
the oldest museum on my list.
Fame/Iconicity: It's the obvious
number one for Istanbul. Outwith the city, it has attained a quietly
legendary status, but isn't one of the world's most recognised
buildings.
Context: It's
not only in the heart of Istanbul, it is
the
heart of Istanbul.
Back Story: A wealth of stories,
eras, and empires, and effectively telling the story of the city. Wonderful.
Uniqueness: If
it looks like the mosques around it, it's because it inspired them.
Yet, as a result, visually there are vaguely similar structures.
Otherwise, nothing else is like the Hagia Sophia. It really is one of
a kind.
Wow Factor: Get
yourself onto that rooftop cafe for the main wow, but it still has
impact from the ground, although it's slightly more obscured from
there by various walls and domes. Overall, it's a grower rather than
an instant hitter.I could sit down and drink ten great whiskies and put them in order from one to ten, and nothing at all would be wrong with the tenth, except there were nine better ones out there. When you get a building of the Hagia Sophia's calibre, it feels petty trying to think of what's wrong with it. Because not much is. There are plenty of more beautiful buildings out there, but that's not really the point: the selling points are history and grandeur - and not much beats it on history. With grandeur, if you look to the likes of the Pyramids or the Great Wall, structures that go way beyond the normal call of duty, then maybe the Hagia Sophia stumbles a little. It could be bigger - and yes, I know, that's a very pernickety point. And although it's an engrossing structure to simply sit and stare at, perhaps it lacks that absolute otherworldliness that some of the world's very best might have. I don't think all visitors will be immediately captivated - it's a grower. Give it a little time, and you'll realise this is a world heavyweight. I'd place it very high, just not quite the highest, a little below the temple metropolis of Bagan, but sneaking ahead of the Sydney Opera House.
The Seven Wonders of the World So
Far
1. Taj Mahal
2. Great Wall of
China
3. Machu Picchu
4. Easter Island
5. Mont Saint-Michel
6. The Eiffel
Tower
7. The Millau Viaduct
7. The Millau Viaduct
Other Wonders
Angkor Wat
Bagan
Hagia
Sophia
Sydney Opera House
Borobudur
Marvels
Chartres Cathedral
The Houses of
Parliament and Big Ben
St Paul's Cathedral
Notre-Dame de Paris
Meteora
Meteora
The Parthenon
Cristo Redentor
The Palace of Versailles
The Palace of Versailles
Carcassonne
Ellora
The
Blue Mosque
Akshardham
Petronas Towers
Notable Landmarks (or National Wonders)
The Golden
Temple
Amiens Cathedral
Amiens Cathedral
Shwedagon Pagoda
Forbidden City
Edinburgh Castle
Thiepval Memorial
Thiepval Memorial
Tower Bridge
The Sacre-Coeur
Bodhi Tataung
Standing Buddha
Banaue Rice
Terraces
Temple of the
Emerald Buddha
Interesting
Places
Terracotta Army
Leshan Giant Buddha
Nazca Lines
Marina Bay Sands
Non-essential
Agra Fort
Ayutthaya Historic
Park
Lotus Temple
Three Gorges Dam
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