If there is one thing everyone recognises from the skyline of Istanbul it is the dome of the Hagia Sophia. Only it isn't, The one most people think of, and the image you usually see used all the time, is actually the Blue Mosque next door.
The outside of the Hagia Sophia is like a dumping ground for the old gods. Heads of Apollo and pagan sarcophagi lie around like they were cement castings in a cheap garden centre, already trampled by one religious cult almost a thousand years earlier by the time the Ottomans took their turn.
Get through the security guards and the scanners and the idiots with selfie sticks and you get to the main portal that forms the entrance to the church.
While everyone wanders round the main floor of the church, gawping with their necks cricked and their jaws hanging open, go upstairs. There is a long ramp that takes you up on to a gallery that opens up to this view.
On the floor is a green marble disc which marks the spot where the Empress's throne would have sat. This was her view. If you stop here and look out you see what the Byzantine nobility saw. They saw themselves removed the world that scurried below. You are looking down on the empire from here. It is all right at your feet.
This was what power felt like.
The upper galleries were the most interesting parts, for me. Yeah, sure, on the floor of the nave you see the spectacle, you see the grandeur. The interior of the Hagia Sophia is maybe one of the greatest spaces I have ever stood in. It makes you feel small. On each corner of the apse is an immense cherub. Not the fat-arsed little winged babies of the Baroque, these are full blown Old Testament demons. They are there to scare, to teach you that you are an insignificant little speck of cosmic dust facing the most terrifying force in the universe. These aren't even gods, they are just God's helpers. Think about what you could be facing. Remember, these were created just 500 years after the supposed beginnings of Christianity. They were closer to the Biblical era than we are to Martin Luther's Reformation. These monsters were real to them. Even today, wandering round the ground floor leaves you with a feeling that the whole Hagia Sophia was created to remind you where the power lay.
Upstairs, though, you start to get a sense of what it was like to not be a subject, to not be at the mercy of all that power. The nave is dark and gloomy and you can imagine it filled with the haze of incense and the sound of chanting. The upper galleries, these are light and airy and bright. There is a sense you, peasant, were not meant to be here. There were not even that many fuckwits with selfie sticks in this section. It was exclusive: this was the Byzantine VIP lounge. In John Julius Norwish's fantastic book, The Popes, he describes many of the visitors to Constantinople in the last days of the Romans. The Hagia Sophia is one of the last places where you can walk where these people walked.
Everyone walked past it but it was one of the things I came to see in the Hagia Sophia. Enrico Dandolo was Doge of Venice. Venice was on the up, Byzantium was on its way down. Dandolo, a well known bastard of his age, had a lot of grudges against the empire and engineered himself into the Fourth Crusade. The Frankish armies found themselves broke in Venice. Dandolo, the schemer, saw an opportunity and offered them passage to the Holy Land for "free". Then, as now, read the fine print. Instead, the crusaders found themselves employed in sacking Constantinople, "encouraged" by the old, blind Doge. The great sea-port of the east found itself under the control of the great sea-port of the west in what would be called today, collateral damage. In 1205, aged 98, Dandolo ended up dead after the crusader army was once again persuaded to fight another imaginary enemy, the Bulgarians. It was a disaster, the crusader king was captured and Dandolo exited the scene forever.
The Ottomans tore down Dandolo's tomb. His marker today is very obviously just a piece of scrap marble that was used during the 18th century restoration.
