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Hagia Sophia, Istanbul > 
After the repression of the frightful revolt, Justinian conceived the grandiose project of rebuilding the Great Church from its foundations. This time it was to be built on plans well in advance of the times, using new daring vaulting techniques and statics. The men for the task were available. The mathematician Anthemius of Tralles and the architect Isidorus of Miletus worked with imagination and scientific accuracy to create a new design and build a masterpiece that stands unique throughout the centuries. Nothing like it was ever built before or after.
Anthemius and Isidorus had at their disposal a very large number of specialized craftsmen: technicians, masons, marble-carvers and many others. They were given a wide choice of building materials. The marble workshops of the empire, those of the Proconnesian islands, of Athens, Paros and Thessaly, furnished a variety of colored marble. Marble members from ancient sanctuaries (Delphi, Rome, Ephesus, Egypt) were skillfully re-used in the new edifice. Construction works lasted five years (532 537) and on 27 December 537, Patriarch Menas (536-552) consecrated the magnificent church. Some scholars maintain that construction was completed in 20 years, that thousands of crafts men were employed and that the church was consecrated in 552, in the patriarchy of Eutychius (552-565).
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More on this Website >
• http://www.patriarchate.org/ec ... _sophia__page_1.html
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Constantine I, Founder of Constantinople
The emperor Constantine has rightly been called the most important emperor of Late Antiquity. His powerful personality laid the foundations of post-classical European civ... |
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Justinian I, Last Roman Emperor
Justinianus, commonly known as Justinian I, was Eastern Roman Emperor from 527 until his death, and second member of the Justinian Dynasty, after his uncle Justin I. Just... |
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The Fall of Constantinople
When, at the age of twenty-one, Mehmed II (1451-1481) sat on the throne of the Ottoman Sultans his first thoughts turned to Constantinople. The capital was all that was... |
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