Hagia Sophia, officially the Hagia Sophia Mosque, is a mosque and a major cultural and historical site in Istanbul, Turkey. The last of three church buildings to be successively erected on the site by the Eastern Roman Empire, it was completed in 537 AD. It was an Eastern Orthodox church until the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, then a mosque until 1935, then a museum and then from 2020 a mosque again, as well as being a Catholic cathedral for some decades after the Fourth Crusade of 1204.
A dome is an architectural element similar to the hollow upper half of a sphere. There is significant overlap with the term cupola, which may also refer to a dome or a structure on top of a dome. The precise definition of a dome has been a matter of controversy and there are a wide variety of forms and specialized terms to describe them.
The architecture of cathedrals and great churches is characterised by the buildings' large scale and follows one of several branching traditions of form, function and style that derive ultimately from the Early Christian architectural traditions established in Late Antiquity during the Christianisation of the Roman Empire.
Byzantine architecture is the architecture of the Byzantine Empire, or Eastern Roman Empire.
The Blue Mosque in Istanbul, also known by its official name, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, is an Ottoman-era historical imperial mosque located in Istanbul, Turkey. It was constructed between 1609 and 1617 during the rule of Ahmed I and remains a functioning mosque today. It also attracts a large number of tourists and is one of the most iconic and popular monuments of Ottoman architecture.
The Church of Saint Sava is a Serbian Orthodox church which sits on the Vračar plateau in Belgrade, Serbia. It was planned as the bishopric seat and main cathedral of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The church is dedicated to Saint Sava, the founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church and an important figure in medieval Serbia. It is built on the presumed location of St. Sava's grave. His coffin had been moved from Mileševa Monastery to Belgrade. The coffin was placed on a pyre and burnt in 1595 by Ottoman Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha. Bogdan Nestorović and Aleksandar Deroko were finally chosen to be the architects in 1932 after a second revised competition in 1926–27. This sudden decision instigated an important debate in interwar Yugoslavia which centered around the temple's size, design and symbolic national function. This was accompanied by a sizeable increase in the base area of the ambitiously conceived project. The new design departed from the competition guidelines issued in 1926, and was to replicate the dimensions and architecture of Hagia Sophia.
A tholobate or drum is the upright part of a building on which a dome is raised. It is generally in the shape of a cylinder or a polygonal prism. The name derives from the tholos, the Greek term for a round building with a roof and a circular wall.
In architecture, a vault is a self-supporting arched form, usually of stone or brick, serving to cover a space with a ceiling or roof. As in building an arch, a temporary support is needed while rings of voussoirs are constructed and the rings placed in position. Until the topmost voussoir, the keystone, is positioned, the vault is not self-supporting. Where timber is easily obtained, this temporary support is provided by centering consisting of a framed truss with a semicircular or segmental head, which supports the voussoirs until the ring of the whole arch is completed.
The Little Hagia Sophia mosque, formerly the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, is a former Greek Orthodox church dedicated to Saints Sergius and Bacchus in Constantinople, built between 532 and 536, and converted into a mosque during the Ottoman Empire.
Trdat the Architect was the chief architect of the Bagratid kings of Armenia, and most notable for his design of the cathedral at Ani and his reconstruction of the dome of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.
The Hagia Sophia Hurrem Sultan Bathhouse is a sixteenth-century Turkish bath (hamam) in Istanbul, Turkey. It was commissioned by Hurrem Sultan, consort and wife of the Ottoman sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. It was designed by Mimar Sinan on the site of the historical Baths of Zeuxippus for the religious community of the nearby Hagia Sophia.
Santa Sofia is a Roman Catholic church in the town of Benevento, in the region of Campania, in southern Italy; founded in the late-8th century, it retains many elements of its original Lombard architecture.
Domes were a characteristic element of the architecture of Ancient Rome and of its medieval continuation, the Byzantine Empire. They had widespread influence on contemporary and later styles, from Russian and Ottoman architecture to the Italian Renaissance and modern revivals. The domes were customarily hemispherical, although octagonal and segmented shapes are also known, and they developed in form, use, and structure over the centuries. Early examples rested directly on the rotunda walls of round rooms and featured a central oculus for ventilation and light. Pendentives became common in the Byzantine period, provided support for domes over square spaces.
The early domes of the Middle Ages, particularly in those areas recently under Byzantine control, were an extension of earlier Roman architecture. The domed church architecture of Italy from the sixth to the eighth centuries followed that of the Byzantine provinces and, although this influence diminishes under Charlemagne, it continued on in Venice, Southern Italy, and Sicily. Charlemagne's Palatine Chapel is a notable exception, being influenced by Byzantine models from Ravenna and Constantinople. The Dome of the Rock, an Umayyad Muslim religious shrine built in Jerusalem, was designed similarly to nearby Byzantine martyria and Christian churches. Domes were also built as part of Muslim palaces, throne halls, pavilions, and baths, and blended elements of both Byzantine and Persian architecture, using both pendentives and squinches. The origin of the crossed-arch dome type is debated, but the earliest known example is from the tenth century at the Great Mosque of Córdoba. In Egypt, a "keel" shaped dome profile was characteristic of Fatimid architecture. The use of squinches became widespread in the Islamic world by the tenth and eleventh centuries. Bulbous domes were used to cover large buildings in Syria after the eleventh century, following an architectural revival there, and the present shape of the Dome of the Rock's dome likely dates from this time.
Italian Renaissance domes were designed during the Renaissance period of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy. Beginning in Florence, the style spread to Rome and Venice and made the combination of dome, drum, and barrel vaults standard structural forms.
The symbolic meaning of the dome has developed over millennia. Although the precise origins are unknown, a mortuary tradition of domes existed across the ancient world, as well as a symbolic association with the sky. Both of these traditions may have a common root in the use of the domed hut, a shape which was associated with the heavens and translated into tombs.
The Church of Hagia Sophia or Holy Wisdom is a Byzantine church in the medieval town of Monemvasia, Peloponnese, Greece. It forms part of the wider archaeological site of Monemvasia. It was built on the upper town of Monemvasia, and was originally dedicated to Panagia Hodegetria. It is the most important monument of Monemvasia. The Venetians, who held Monemvasia for some time, used it as a Catholic church dedicated to Madonna, while during the Ottoman period it was converted into a mosque before being restored to Christian worship upon Greece's independence.
