Constantinople, v. 1 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

It was a fine morning in October when we at last set forth, accompanied by a Turkish cavas from the Italian consulate and a Greek dragoman, to visit the terrestrial Paradise, second firmament, car of the cherubim, throne of the glory of God, wonder of the world, the greatest temple on earth after St. Peter’s. This last expression, as my friends of Burgos, Cologne, Milan, and Florence must know, is of course not my own, nor would I ever dare to make it so: I merely quote it among the rest as one of the many terms consecrated by the enthusiasm of the Greeks which our dragoman repeated to us as we passed along the streets. We had purposely supplemented him by the old Turkish cavas in the hope—and we were not disappointed—that their two accounts might bring vividly before us the struggle between the two religions, histories, and nations, the legends and explanations of one magnifying the Church, those of the other the Mosque, in such a manner as to make us see St. Sophia as she should be seen; that is to say, with one eye Christian and the other Turkish.

My expectations were very great and my curiosity was all on fire, and yet I realized then, as I do now, that the actual sight of a world-renowned object, no matter how fully it may justify its reputation, never quite comes up to the keen enjoyment one experiences when on his way to see it. If I could live over again one hour out of each of those days on which I saw some great sight for the first time, I would unhesitatingly choose the one which intervenes between the moment of saying, “Now let us start,” and that in which the goal is reached. Those are the traveller’s most blissful hours. As you walk along you can feel your soul expand, preparing, as it were, to receive the streams of enthusiasm and delight soon to well up in it. You recall your boyhood’s dreams, which then seemed so hopelessly far from realization; you remember how a certain old professor of geography, after pointing out Constantinople on the map of Europe, traced the outline of the great basilica in the air, a pinch of snuff between his thumb and fore finger; you see that room, that hearth, in front of which, during the coming winter, you will describe to a circle of wondering and attentive faces the famous building; you hear that name, St. Sophia, ringing in your head, your heart, your ears like the voice of a living person who calls, and awaits your coming to reveal some mighty secret: you see above your head dim, prodigious outlines of arch and pilaster and column, mighty buildings which reach to the heavens, and when, at last, but a few steps more are wanted to bring you face to face with the reality, you linger to examine a pebble, watch the passage of a lizard, tell some trifling anecdote—anything that may serve to postpone, if but for a few seconds, that moment to which for twenty years you have been looking forward, and which you will remember for the rest of your life. And, truly, if you take away what goes before and what follows after, not so very much remains of the much-talked-of joys of seeing and admiring. It is almost always a delusion, followed by a slight awakening, after which we obstinately delude ourselves again.

Fountain of Ahmed.

The mosque of St. Sophia stands opposite the main entrance of the old Seraglio. On reaching, however, the open square which lies between the two, the first object to attract attention is, not the mosque, but the famous fountain of Sultan Ahmed III., one of the richest and most characteristic examples of Turkish art. This exquisite little building is not so much a monument as a caress in marble imprinted in a moment of passionate adoration by an enamored sultan upon the forehead of his beloved Stambul. I doubt if any but a woman’s pen can do it justice: mine, I feel convinced, is far too coarse and heavy to trace those delicate outlines. At first sight it hardly looks like a fountain at all, being in the form of a little square temple with a Chinese roof, whose undulating rim extends for some distance beyond the walls, and lends to the whole something of the character of a pagoda. At each corner rises a round tower furnished with small screened windows, or, rather, they are more like four charming kiosks, corresponding to the graceful cupolas on the roof which encircle the main central cupola. In each of the four walls are two niches, flanking a pointed arch, beneath which the water flows from a spout into a small basin. Around the edifice there runs an inscription which reads as follows: “This fountain speaks to you in the following verse by Sultan Ahmed: Turn the key of this pure and tranquil spring and call upon the name of God; drink of these inexhaustible and limpid waters and pray for the Sultan.” The little building is composed entirely of white marble, which, however, is almost hidden beneath the mass of ornamentation with which its walls are covered—arches, niches, tiny columns, roses, polygons, garlands, fretwork, gilding on a background of blue. Carving around the cupolas, inlaid-work below the roof, mosaics of a hundred different combinations of color, arabesques of every conceivable form,—all seem to vie with one another to attract attention and arouse admiration, until one’s powers of seeing and admiring are well-nigh exhausted. Not so much as a hand’s breadth of space is left free from carving, painting, gilding, or ornament of some sort. It is a prodigy of richness, beauty, and patience, which should, by rights, be preserved under a glass case; and, as though it were too perfect to delight but one sense alone, you are tempted to break off a piece and put it in your mouth, feeling that it must taste good as well—a casket designed, as one would suppose, to guard some priceless treasure, and you long to open it and find the—what? Infant goddess, magic ring, or fabulous pearl. Time has to some extent faded the brilliant colors, dimmed the gilding, and darkened the marble; think, then, what this colossal jewel must have been when first unveiled, all fresh and sparkling, before the eyes of the Solomon of the Bosphorus a hundred and sixty years ago! But, old and faded as it is, it undoubtedly occupies the first place among the lesser wonders of Constantinople, and is, moreover, an object so distinctively Turkish that, once seen, it claims a prominent position among that certain number of others which will dwell for ever in one’s memory, ready to rise up at the sound of the word “Stambul;” the background for all time against which will be thrown out one’s dreams and visions of the Orient.

Looking across from the fountain, St. Sophia can be seen occupying one side of the intervening square. About the exterior there is nothing especially noteworthy. The only points which attract the eye are the lofty white minarets, which rise at the four corners from pedestals each the size of a house. The celebrated dome looks small, and it seems impossible that this can be the same as that which we are wont to see, from the Bosphorus and Sea of Marmora and the hillsides of Asia, rearing its mighty form like the head of some Titan against the blue heavens. It is a flattened dome overlaid with lead, flanked by two semi-domes, and pierced at the base by a row of small windows. The four walls which support it are painted in broad bands of white and red and strengthened by enormous masses of masonry. A number of mean-looking buildings, baths, schools, hospitals, mausoleums, and soup-kitchens, crowd around the base and effectually conceal the ancient architectural form of the basilica. Nothing can be seen but a heavy, irregular edifice, faded and bare as a fortress, and apparently totally inadequate to embrace the mighty expanse of St. Sophia’s great nave. Of the original basilica only the dome is visible, and even that has been despoiled of the silver splendor which, according to the Greeks, could once be seen from the summit of the Olympus. All the rest is Mussulman: one minaret was erected by Muhammad the Conqueror, another by Selim II., the two others by the Third Murad, the same who toward the close of the sixteenth century added the buttresses to strengthen the walls shaken by an earthquake, and placed the huge bronze crescent on the summit of the dome, the gilding alone of which cost fifty thousand ducats. The ancient atrium has disappeared, and the baptistry has been converted into a mausoleum where are interred the remains of Mustafa I. and Ibrahim, while nearly every one of the other small buildings which adjoined the Greek church have been either destroyed outright or else, by the erection of new walls or some other alteration, changed past recognition: on all sides the mosque crowds, pushes, and bears down upon the church, of which the head alone remains free, and even around that the imperial minarets mount guard like four gigantic sentinels. On the east side there is a doorway flanked by six marble and porphyry columns; another on the south leads into a courtyard surrounded by low, irregular buildings, in the midst of which a fountain for ablutions plays beneath a little arched canopy supported on eight, small columns. Viewed from the outside, there is nothing to distinguish St. Sophia from the other great mosques of Stambul, except that it is heavier and dingier; far less would it ever enter one’s head to name it “the greatest temple on earth after St. Peter’s.”

Mosque of St. Sophia.

Our guides conducted us by a narrow street skirting the northern wall of the edifice to a bronze door, which, swinging slowly back on its hinges, admitted us to the eso-narthex. This is a very long and lofty hall lined with marbles, and still glowing here and there with ancient mosaics. Nine doors on the eastern side give access to the body of the church, opposite which five others formerly led to the exo-narthex, which, in turn, communicated by thirteen doors with the atrium. We had barely crossed the threshold when a turbaned sacristan demanded our firmans, and then, after donning slippers, at a sign from the guides we approached the middle door on the eastern side, which stood half open to receive us. The first effect is certainly quite overpowering, and for some moments we remained stunned and speechless. In a single glance one is confronted by an enormous space and a bold architecture of semi-domes which seem to hang suspended in the air, enormous pilasters, mighty arches, gigantic columns, galleries, tribunes, arcades, over which floods of light are poured from a thousand great windows—a something I hardly know how to define of theatrical and regal rather than sacred; an ostentation of size and strength; a look of worldly pomp; a mixture of the classic, barbarous, fanciful, arrogant, and magnificent; a stupendous harmony in which, with the formidable and thunderous notes of the pilasters and cyclopean arches, recalling the cathedrals of the North, there mingle soft, subdued strains of some Oriental air, the noisy music of the revels of Justinian and Heraclitus, echoes of pagan chants, the choked voice of an effeminate and wornout race, and distant cries of Goth, of Vandal, and of Avar; a mighty defaced majesty, a sinister nakedness, a profound peace—St. Peter’s shrunken and plastered over, St. Mark’s enlarged and abandoned; a quite indescribable mingling of church, mosque, and temple, severe in aspect, puerile in adornment—of things old and new, faded colors, and curious, unfamiliar accessories: a sight, in short, so bewildering, so awe-inspiring, and at the same time so full of melancholy, that for a time the mind cannot grasp its full meaning, but gropes about uncertainly, trying to find first what it is, and then words in which to express it.

The plan of the edifice nearly approaches an equilateral rectangle, over the centre of which rises the great dome, supported on four mighty arches resting upon massive pilasters: these form, as it were, the skeleton of the entire building. From the arches on the right and left of the entrance there rise, before and beyond the great dome, two semi-domes, the three covering the entire nave, these semi-domes have six exedræ, of which the four on the sides are also covered with semi-domes, making four small circular temples enclosed in the large one. Between the two exedræ at the east end of the building is the apse, which projects beyond the external wall, and is likewise covered with a domed roof. Thus seven semi-domes encircle the main one, two just beyond it and five more beyond these, all of them without any apparent support, and presenting an extraordinary impression of lightness, as though they actually were, as a Greek poet once said, suspended by seven cords from the roof of the sky. All these domes are lighted by large windows arched and symmetrical. Between the four great pilasters, which form a square in the centre of the basilica, there rise to the right and left of the entrance eight wonderful columns of green marble, from which spring graceful arches richly carved with foliage, forming charming porticos on either side of the nave, and supporting at a great height two vast galleries, where are to be seen two other lines of columns and sculptured arches. A third gallery, communicating with the first two, runs above the narthex, and opens out on the nave by means of three enormous arches supported on double columns. Other smaller galleries, resting upon porphyry columns, intersect the four small temples at the extremities of the nave, and from them rise other columns supporting tribunes.