How the Hagia Sophia Was Built, and How It’s Being Saved from Collapse

Ask around for what every­one knows about Istan­bul (oth­er than that it used to be called Con­stan­tino­ple), and you’ll find that the pres­ence of Hagia Sophia there comes right to many a mind. Less like­ly to be men­tioned is its prone­ness to earth­quakes, though it tends to rank just below Tokyo on lists of cities under the great­est threat from fault lines below. These two char­ac­ter­is­tics turn out to have a con­nec­tion, man­i­fest in the ongo­ing seis­mic retro­fitting of Istan­bul’s sym­bol­ic cathe­dral-turned-mosque-turned-muse­um turned-mosque-again. Hagia Sophia is one of the most cel­e­brat­ed reli­gious build­ings stand­ing; keep­ing it that way requires a seri­ous engi­neer­ing effort, as explained in the new B1M video above.

Since it was first built in the fourth cen­tu­ry, Hagia Sophia has actu­al­ly sus­tained severe earth­quake dam­age quite a few times, includ­ing a com­plete col­lapse of its cupo­la in the year 558 and par­tial col­laps­es in the tenth and four­teenth cen­turies. The con­struc­tion of its famous cen­tral dome, along with the small­er sub-domes that sup­port it, gets a sec­tion of its own in the video.

Host Fred Mills also gives due men­tion to the eight green mar­ble columns that sup­port the upper floors of the cathe­dral, thought to have been recy­cled from the ruins of the Tem­ple of Artemis (one of the Sev­en Won­ders of the Ancient World), and the red stone set into the floor on which emper­ors were once crowned that would have been brought in from the Egypt­ian desert.

In these and oth­er respects, Hagia Sophia isn’t just a site of pil­grim­age and wor­ship, but also a ver­i­ta­ble built record of cen­turies upon cen­turies of Roman, Greek, Chris­t­ian, and Islam­ic civ­i­liza­tion. As evi­denced by the scaf­fold­ing cur­rent­ly up to facil­i­tate the project of ready­ing it for the inevitable com­ing of the big one — or rather, the big­ger one — the struc­ture con­tin­ues to change with time, though our era has an espe­cial­ly strong con­cern for pre­serv­ing what have by now become his­tor­i­cal fea­tures. Hence the efforts now being put into restora­tion: of the dome, nat­u­ral­ly, but also of the floors, columns, and mosaics. If all goes well, Hagia Sophia will con­tin­ue to stand as the most strik­ing struc­ture in Istan­bul’s already dra­mat­ic urban and geo­graph­i­cal set­ting for anoth­er mil­len­ni­um and a half, incor­po­rat­ing his­to­ry all the while.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Hagia Sophia: After 85 Years as a Muse­um, It’s Set to Become a Mosque Again

How the Byzan­tine Empire Rose, Fell, and Cre­at­ed the Glo­ri­ous Hagia Sophia: A His­to­ry in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

A Cul­tur­al Tour of Istan­bul, Where the Art and His­to­ry of Three Great Empires Come Togeth­er

360 Degree Vir­tu­al Tours of the Hagia Sophia

Hear the Hagia Sophia’s Awe-Inspir­ing Acoustics Get Recre­at­ed with Com­put­er Sim­u­la­tions, and Let Your­self Get Trans­port­ed Back to the Mid­dle Ages

Istan­bul Cap­tured in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images from 1890: The Hagia Sophia, Top­ka­ki Palace’s Impe­r­i­al Gate & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.