Hagia Sophia
Istanbul, Turkey • 537
Justinian I’s sixth-century church, one of 30 the emperor commissioned in Constantinople, was built in just six years.
This is a massive structure and an incredible undertaking for its day. But what’s most important is that the building was first constructed as a Greek Orthodox cathedral, later becoming a Catholic cathedral, and still later a mosque. Today it’s a museum. It still has those four great later-added towers on the outside, which identify it as a mosque. But for me the transformation from one use to another is nearly invisible. When I look at it I see a mosque, but if you take away bits and pieces, it suddenly becomes a cathedral. The quality of the workmanship is not great (I’m an engineer who tends to look with a worried eye toward things that accidentally twist and lean), but the space inside just blows your mind. Forty arched windows flood the interior with a pale blue aura. When people enter the space, their eyes light up. The building was constructed of masonry, which shifted constantly during construction and thereafter. Today we use “switch-on gravity analysis,” where we imagine a structure built on the Moon and then digitally move it over to the Earth in a fraction of a second, and suddenly it’s loaded. But a structure like this changed its characteristics during construction, almost minute by minute. I can’t image how people could have had the courage to construct it. - L.R.