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The Church of the Holy Wisdom, which was close to the palace of the
Byzantine emperors in the heart of what is now Istanbul, is one of the
worlds greatest religious buildings, a Christian cathedral for centuries, a
Muslim mosque for centuries more and now a museum. According to one
tradition the first church on the site was built on the orders of Constantine
the Great, who died in the year 337, but if so it seems to have collapsed and
been replaced by a grander building in 360, during the reign of the Emperor
Constantius. That church was burned down during protests in the city in 404
and nothing remains of it. A replacement was soon built on the orders of the
Emperor Theodosius II in 415, but it was destroyed in its turn in 532, when
furious rioting broke out against the Emperor Justinian, the imperial palace
was besieged and the church was burned to the ground. Justinian quelled
the riots, regained control and immediately ordered the architects
Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus to build a colossal and even
grander church, on a different scale altogether from its predecessors. Stone
was brought from quarries in Egypt, Syria, Libya and elsewhere, columns
were fetched from the pagan temple of Artemis at Ephesus and the temple
city. In the 1930s the Turkish government turned it into a museum. Visiting it
is a deeply inspiring experience.
By Richard Cavendish