The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople: A Study of Byzantine Building

by W. R. Lethaby; Harold Swainson

The vault of each division of the aisles is supported on four columns. Those next the east and west walls of the church, eight in all, are square, the others are round. The divisions of the galleries follow those of the aisles underneath. The four main piers however were pierced by additional arched openings [now filled up] between the galleries and the nave. The part over the narthex opens to the nave by three arches, on coupled columns. Above is the immense semicircular window which fills up the central barrel vault at the western end.

All the openings towards the nave in the upper aisles have marble parapets. The vaulting of the lower aisles rests on forty round columns and eight square ones, and in the galleries on sixty round columns, not including the coupled columns at the west; this makes in all a hundred round columns. Possibly the eight square pillars in the aisles were employed, so that this number should not be exceeded.

In the walls are numerous large windows, and the dome is pierced by forty just above the cornice; thus light streams into the church from every quarter. Much of the dome, including the central circle of mosaic at the crown, can be seen from the Royal Door.

The greater number of the buildings which formerly surrounded the church are either destroyed, or so altered by Turkish minarets and buttresses that it is difficult to conjecture their original form.[239]

On the north and south of the narthex are long porches of Byzantine workmanship, with cylindrical vaults. In the northern one is a flight of fourteen steps leading down from outside to the narthex. The southern porch is called by Von Hammer the Vestibule of the Warriors. It is mentioned by Nicetas as the place where the Archangel Michael was represented in mosaic. It was through this porch that the emperor passed to the church, and here some of the bodyguard would remain. The vaulting still bears the remains of mosaics which are now covered up.

On the east sides of both the northern and southern porches are accesses to the gynaeceum, formed of a series of inclined planes. The entrance to the northern one is from the porch, but the southern stair is reached from a narrow passage between it and the baptistery. To the west of the northern and southern porches, in the angles between them and the outside walls of the atrium, are the two minarets built by Murad III.

On the first-floor level, above the southern porch and part of the adjacent staircase, is a series of chambers,[240] of which the purpose is not known. The walls of the two larger chambers are covered with marble, and their ceilings with mosaic.

Only one stairway is now extant at the east. The minaret built by Mahomed II., which helps to buttress the south-east corner of the church, occupies the position of a second. Salzenberg’s Plate xiv. shows the stairway restored, but in Plate xiii. the northern one is removed to explain the arrangement of the part of the building to the south of it. On entering at the door of this north-eastern stairway one can either mount the ascending planes which wind round a well for light, or go to the left through a small lobby into the church. On the right steps ascend to the round building adjacent. The light ‘well’ once ascended the whole height of the staircase, which seems to have been formerly still higher, as the eastern wall of the church, which is here prolonged northwards, rises about four feet above the present roof of the stairway, and shows the remains of a window. These stairways may have been built by Andronicus Palaeologus in the fourteenth century, when he erected the buttress masses which are called pyramids by Nicephorus Gregoras. All these stairways however were additions to the building, probably built when the dome abutments were strengthened. The original staircases to the gynaeceum were in the four piers by the northern and southern walls of the church, and the steps from the gynaeceum to the base of the dome still remain.[241]

In the eastern buttress pier on the south side is a portion of one of the original staircases, leading downwards from the gynaeceum, though beneath on the ground floor there is now a vaulted passage.[242] In the western buttress pier on the south side, at the ground-floor level, is a vaulted passage adorned with mosaic, and a door leading to an external addition. In the similar position on the gynaeceum level, the staircase, which formerly led higher, has been destroyed, to make a way to the upper floor of this same late annex.

The south-east porch may have been used by the emperors on non-festal days, as it was close to the southern aisle where they sat. Three columns are now placed on each side of this porch; the two outer ones are of porphyry, and have capitals with a design of a basket and doves.[243] These capitals are fine Byzantine work, although the arch above may be Turkish. Here seven steps descend into the church. The other porch on the north of the east end was destroyed at the last restoration to make an entrance for the Sultan. Remains of a series of chambers can still be traced on the east side between the porches: their roofs must have been below the lower windows of the eastern wall. The chambers are now built up; but their original plan may be conjectured from the lead saddle-roofs, which have gutters that conduct the rainwater through the outer wall. Two doors from the porches, and two doors from the church—all four now blocked up—show the previous communication with this row of chambers, which probably contained the priests’ vestments, and the vessels for the altar.