Destination 5 - Hagia Sophia, Turkey, Istanbul

East meets west in Byzantium, also known as Constantinople and Istanbul. Perhaps the main meeting point is the Hagia Sophia, which has variously been an eastern Orthodox Cathedral, a roman catholic cathedral, an imperial mosque and a secular museum. The clutter of names around a building also known as Sancta Sapienti, Aya Sofya and Magna Ecclesia result from a culture and architectural clutter sometimes willed by existing incumbents, sometimes introduced by new ones. Its instigator, Emperor Justinian, plundered building materials from throughout the Byzantine Empire. Hellenistic columns came from the nearby Temple of Artemis and Corinthian columns were shipped from Lebanon along with green marble from Macedonia, black stone from Bulgaria, yellow stone from Syria and porphyry from Egypt.

Walls and ceilings were covered on gold mosaics revealing God's holy fire surrounded by lords and ladies, young lovers, shoals of leaping fish, ecstatic musicians and choirs, solemn saints and soaring angels. Justinian declared ' Solomon, I have outdone you,' and the Hagia Sophia remained the largest temple in the world until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520. By then, the building was a mosque and many of its mosaic had been plastered over, in accordance with the Islamic ban on figurative images. At ground level, most of what now confronts the visitor is still Islamic. Higher up, Orthodox Christian iconography is being uncovered. Maintaining balance of religious, restorative and conservation interest is most difficult in the dome, where Islamic calligraphy overlays an Orthodox picture of Christ.

The 30 m diameters dome is uncluttered in form, and what was without precedent when Hagia Sophia was built in the sixth century remains utterly extraordinary. It is monument of unageing  intellect, designed by physicist and mathematician who between them realized the world's first pendentive dome. The elegance is augmented by an arcade of 40 windows around the dome's base from which, in a way that invokes a spiritual responses regardless of creed, light diffuses through the whole building and makes the dome seem to hover above the nave. Hagia Sophia now hovers above religious divides. A museum administered by a secular state, this monument to wisdom has somehow overarched the vicissitudes of time, volcanic eruption and violent regime change.

Inside Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia Dome