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Hagia Sophia (Turkish: Ayasofya; Ancient Greek: Ἁγία Σοφία, romanized: Hagía Sophía; Latin: Sancta Sapientia; lit. ' Holy Wisdom '), officially the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque (Turkish: Ayasofya-i Kebir Cami-i Şerifi; Greek: Μεγάλο Τζαμί της Αγίας Σοφίας), is a mosque and former church serving as a major cultural and historical site in Istanbul, Turkey.
Hagia Sophia (from the Greek: Ἁγία Σοφία, "Holy Wisdom"; Latin: Sancta Sophia or Sancta Sapientia; Turkish: Ayasofya) was the cathedral of Constantinople in the state church of the Roman Empire and the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church's Patriarchate. After 1453 it became a mosque, and since 1931 it has been a museum in Istanbul ...
They built the Spanish (1854) and Iranian (1856) embassies in Istanbul and the Ottoman University, adjacent to the Hagia Sophia. In addition, they built three Italian theaters. One of them was the Naum Theatre, which was built in Galatasaray in 1846, and destroyed by a fire in 1870. In 1858, the Fossati brothers returned to Switzerland.
The major church in a monastery is called a catholicon, and may be reserved for major services, lesser services being celebrated in other churches in the monastery. A church independent of local eparchy is called "stauropegial sobor" (Greek stauropegia means "mounting of the cross"). For example, patriarchal sobors are stauropigial ones.
In early churches, including the Hagia Sophia ("Great Church") in Constantinople, the altar, at least in large churches, was under a ciborium (ciborion: κιβώριον in Greek), usually a structure with four columns and a domed canopy.
The Hagia Sophia, topped by a dome 31 meters (102 ft) in diameter over a square space defined by four arches, is the pinnacle of Byzantine architecture. [157] The Hagia Sophia stood as the world's largest cathedral in the world until it was converted into a mosque in the 15th century. [157] The minarets date from that period. [157]
At Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, there is a central dome, framed on one axis by two high semi-domes and on the other by low rectangular transept arms, the overall plan being square. This large church was to influence the building of many later churches, even into the 21st century.
Byzantine art comprises the body of artistic products of the Eastern Roman Empire, [1] as well as the nations and states that inherited culturally from the empire. Though the empire itself emerged from the decline of western Rome and lasted until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, [2] the start date of the Byzantine period is rather clearer in art history than in political history, if still ...