BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE

(330 – 550AD)
Historical Background
After Roman Caesar Constantine had conferred full religion liberty, in favour of the

Christianity he made Byzantium to his residence in 330 AD and called it Constantinople.

Note: Byzantium was a colony on the European shore, founded by Byzas about 7 th century

B.C.

Constantinople (Istanbul since 1930) became the second city of the Roman Empire after

Rome itself and became the centre of Byzantium, the East Roman Empire. Christianity

had made a quick advance in the entire Roman Empire and so in Byzantium and that is

where Byzantine Architecture found its origins.

First the Christians only needed an adapted house to celebrate the Eucharist, but in the

fourth century there grew needs for churches, for Gods’ houses.

Note: Eucharist is also called Holy Communion or Lord’s Supper in Christianity. A

commemoration of Jesus’s last supper with his disciples.

First, The Roman market basilicas were used as model. The architecture in the early

Byzantine period 324-610 from Constantine to Justitianus was still very Roman, like the

aqueduct, the hippodrome, the Theodosian land wall and the big axis’s of the city plan.

The most important domed buildings of this period are san Vitale in Ravenna, which was

the seat of the Byzantine governor in Italy and the Hagia Sophia (Church of Holy wisdom)

in Constantinople. Lightness and elegance replaced the mass and power of “Old” Rome as

the predominant impression conveyed by these buildings. More and more arches and

domes were balanced on top of each other for structural as well as aesthetic reasons:
lateral ambulatories and semi-domes acted as abutments for the thrust of the main dome

which like all arched or vaulted structures exerted a lateral thrust on the columns or walls.

The domes of Constantinople, the “second Rome”, symbolized the cosmos and heaven.

The centrally planned churches became an architectural model which has, in part

remained the prescribed model for Christian Churches in the East to the present day. The

Construction of the new Hagia Sophia, funded by Caesar Justinian can be seen as the

beginning of Byzantine Architecture.

The meaning of architecture underwent a transformation in early Christian times.

Individual forms and types may have been adopted from ancient architecture but they

were reinterpreted. Buildings were now intended to declare the glory of God so the whole

–like the parts-assumed a symbolic meaning.

Characteristics of Byzantine Architecture

1. Churches played a very important role in the Byzantine architecture, because Byzantine

architecture has its roots in Christianity.

2. Cross domed churches: The Byzantine churches have a strong typology, which is created

out of the Roman market basilica and the dome.

3. Plan: Most ecclesiastical buildings consist of the Greek cross-formed floor plan with a

dome in the middle of it, the cross dome. On the east side is the apse, on the west side the

narthex.

4. Decoration also played an important role in the Byzantine architecture. Frescos and

mosaics were used frequently in churches and palaces. Mosaics were seen as very useful

for depicturing the heaven, because it summons a two-dimensional image very well

because of the absence of depth lines. Those frescos and mosaics showed biblical text

and saints. Gold mosaics were used to create an imagination of the hereafter.

5. The Byzantines also used various kinds of vaulting, including the barrel vault, the cross-

groined vault, the dome upon a drum or rotunda, the domical vault or pendentive dome,

the dome on pendentives, and the dome on squinches.

6. The pendentive was invented in Byzantine architecture. A pendentive is a spherical

formed triangle that elegantly realized the transition between a square plan and a dome.

Setting bricks in parts of circular layers created pendentives. These parts of circular

layers increased in length, but decreased in diameter from the square plan to the circular

form of the dome.

7. Byzantine Architecture had thick walls and thick mortar joints which gave room for

decorative masonry walls.

8. The wall decorative patterns are in different directions, radial, spiral, zigzag, alternating

squares, fishbone and diagonal.

9. Byzantine masonry has thick horizontal joints, (almost) as thick as the bricks and small

vertical joints of just a few millimetres, which gives the wall a rich texture.

10. The main building materials of the Byzantine world were stone (including marble), brick

(of mud or clay), mortar (of varying qualities), and timber.

11. The Byzantines followed Greek and Roman precedents in the use of iron for cramps and

tie-bars.

12. The use of clerestory emanated from the Byzantine Architecture.

Materials Used In Byzantine Building Construction
The main building materials of the Byzantine world were stone (including marble), brick (of

mud or clay), mortar (of varying qualities), and timber. Each of these materials were used, and

the ways in which they were employed, depended on availability, local tradition, structural

performance, economic, and aesthetic considerations.

Mortar
Mortar was used in beds between stone or brick courses, and for binding together the rubble that

formed the core of walls. It was made by burning limestone to make lime, which was then slaked

with water. If a lime containing less than 10 per cent clay was used, a non-hydraulic mortar was

made, which had little strength and would dissolve in water. A hydraulic mortar, which would

harden when immersed in water, and which was of far superior strength, could be made either by

using a limestone containing 10–40 per cent clay or by crushing and adding certain volcanic

deposits to the lime. In Roman Italy, non-hydraulic lime was used, but a volcanic dust called

pozzolana was added to it. When added to rubble, the resulting pozzolanic mortar created a high-

strength opus caementicium, often referred to as ‘concrete’, although strictly that is a modern

term referring to an artificial mixture of lime, clay, and metallic salts.

Bricks
Brick had been extensively used in Roman Greece, the Balkans, and Asia Minor, presumably

having been introduced from the West, but the metropolitan practice of using brick or stone to

face a core of mortared rubble was only occasionally followed.

Generally, the use of brick in the provinces fell into one of two categories: solid brick

construction (as in the Harbour Baths at Ephesus and the towers of the walls of Nicaea), or
banded construction, in which bands of mortared rubble faced with small stone blocks

alternated with solid brick bands that passed right through the wall, serving as bonding and

levelling courses (as in the aqueduct of Los Milagro at Mérida and the curtain walls of Nicaea)

These techniques continued to be used into Late Antiquity: solid brick was used, for instance, in

the Constantinian basilica at Trier, the fifth-century walls of Ravenna and the sixth-century walls

of Durres (Albania). Banded construction continued to be used in Constantinople after the so-

called Dark Ages until the fourteenth century, with variations in the numbers of brick and stone

courses.

In the provinces both the solid brickwork and banded brickwork techniques continued to be used
into the Byzantine period.

Stone
In the Thracian hinterland of Constantinople in the fourth and fifth centuries, aqueduct bridges

were constructed of solid stone in their lower parts and of stone-faced mortared rubble above and

in the late fifth century the Anastasian Long Walls were built with ashlar facing. In the same

period in the city itself, the rotundas beside the Hippodrome and at the Myrelaion were built (at

least in their lower parts) of substantial ashlar blocks joined by cramps of wood or of iron set in

lead.

Such extensive use of stone was, however, exceptional, and in the city's later buildings—

presumably for economic reasons, as stone was more expensive to transport than brick—ashlar

was largely restricted to load-bearing elements, such as levelling courses (e.g. St Polyeuktos, the

peristyle of the Great Palace) and piers (e.g. Hagia Sophia). The quality of the finishing and

decoration of the stone would depend partly on its hardness: the limestone of northern Syria is
soft to work and was often carved with intricate designs, whereas the basalt of southern Syria is

poorly finished and lacks decoration.

Timber
Timber was used during the construction process for many purposes, such as scaffolding—which

might stand free of the wall or be engaged into putlog holes in the wall or shuttering to contain

foundation walls of mortared rubble whilst the mortar hardened.

Timber was precious, and more so if highly decorated; the decorated doors of S. Sabina in Rome

are made of cypress and have 18 surviving carved panels showing scenes from the Old and New

Testaments.

Timber centring was necessary to support large arches and vaults until the mortar cured. Centring

apparently occurred during the construction of the eastern arch of Hagia Sophia in about 535.

Wooden tie-beams were used to span the space beneath the springing of arches. Since the many

small vaults of Constantinople's roofed cisterns were supported on parallel arcades of columns,

tie beams were often used to link one column to its four neighbours; all that now remains,

however, are the sockets above the capitals or their imposts.

Beams were also used as string courses in the stone-faced walls of the church of White

Monastery. Wooden piles were used to reclaim land from the sea shortly after Constantinople's

foundation. Wood was also used as an alternative to iron for making dovetail cramps to join

ashlar blocks in levelling courses.

Metal
The Byzantines followed Greek and Roman precedents in the use of iron for cramps and tie-bars;

Iron cramps, either dovetail- or pi-shaped, were used to join together ashlar blocks, and molten

lead was poured into the cramp-holes to prevent the iron from corroding. It was also employed

for ties between adjacent cornice blocks in centralized buildings, thereby creating, it has been

argued, tensile chains containing the thrusts of vaulted roofing systems.

Bronze tiles were used to decorate the exterior of the roofs of prestige buildings, such as that of

Constantine's burial place and the roof of St Peter's.

The Masonry Obelisk set up, probably by Constantine I, in the Hippodrome at Constantinople

was sheathed in bronze.

Lead was also used to grip and cushion glass panes in the shops at Sardis, and, in Constantinople.

Sheets of lead were used to cover roofs of both timber (Constantine's basilica of the Holy

Sepulchre) and masonry (Hagia Erene and Hagia Sophia).

Marble
Marble was largely used for columns, capitals, entablature blocks, cornices, door-frames,

window-frames, church furnishings (such as ambos and chancel screens), and for facing

masonry.

A further use of marble was for opus sectile decoration, either on walls (as above the spandrels

of the nave arcades or floors.

Reuse of materials was a characteristic of Late Roman and Byzantine architecture, in all types of

building; this applies to brick and stone as much as to marble. Some marble was reused purely
because of its value as a structural material, and if extensively reworked cannot be recognized as

such. It is often difficult to determine whether such reuse was out of necessity (because there was

no supply of new material) or pragmatism (because useful old materials such as columns and

capitals were conveniently available close by, either in ruined structures or in depots).

Other marble was reused for its natural beauty or original sculptural decoration. The reuse of

marble, whether necessary or pragmatic, might be symbolic: marble for churches might be taken

from nearby temples to suggest the victory of Christianity over paganism.

Marble was also broken up and used for building walls, or burned to make lime for mortar. In

Rome of the fourth to sixth centuries, the lime-kilns were watched over to ensure that statues

from empty houses and palaces were not being looted and burned.
Study of Byzantine Churches: A Case Study of Hagia Sophia

Summary
Hagia Sophia means Church of Divine or Holy Wisdom.

Built by Emperor Justinian, designed by Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus (men with

a deep knowledge of the mechanical science of the day who are referred to, not as architect, but

as mechanicoi or mechanopoioi. That science was, however, more akin to the geometry of today

than to the science of the modern engineering).

Rose on the site of two successive Basilican churches of the same name.

Hagia Sophia is the most important church in Constantinople and considered as the perfection of

Byzantine style.

Historical Background
The building of the new Hagia Sophia began on February 23, 532, a mere thirty-nine days after

the burning of the old. But it is likely that plans for so vast and complex a structure were already

at hand, together with a preliminary assembly of marble and other building materials. From the

time of his accession five years earlier, Emperor Justinian had been evolving ambitious

architectural plans for his capital, plans designed to ensure his temporal power and immortal

fame. He took a personal hand in the conception and construction of the church that was to be

Constantinople’s cardinal monument; indeed, it was generally believed that its very form had

been revealed to the emperor in a dream. And when the site had been measured out, and the

shape of the dome had been traced, Justinian called upon the patriarch to pray to God for safe

building. Then he personally laid the central foundation stone.

For the work of construction, the emperor gathered “all the artisans from the whole world.”

There were some 100 foremen, each with 100 men beneath him. Justinian shrewdly split his

work force in two, with fifty foremen and their staffs working on the right half of the church and

fifty on the left, so that the structure rose rapidly in a spirit of zealous competition. Within two

years, it had already risen as high as the first story of the side aisles. The labour force, apart from

manual workers on the site and in the brickyards and quarries, included a high proportion of

skilled workers, among them the leaders of many organized crafts or guilds. Stonecutters,

masons, carpenters, polishers, and workers in iron, bronze, and lead were engaged, and as the

work proceeded, they were joined by sculptors, marble workers, mosaicists, goldsmiths, and

glassblowers.

The chief architect was Anthemius of Tralles, whom Procopius describes as “the most learned

man in the skilled craft which is known as the art of building”; his assistant was “another master-

builder, Isidorus by name, a Milesian by birth, a man who was intelligent and worthy to assist the

Emperor Justinian.” Both were Greeks from Asia Minor. Anthemius was the one who thought

out everything and carried it through. Skilled, like Isidorus, in mathematics and kindred sciences,

he came from a talented family that included a philologist, a jurist, and two important doctors.

He is described as a man of many crafts, an inventor, with a reputation for skill in engineering.

Justinian regularly supervised the construction work, and he was ever ready to give advice to the

architects. Procopius records an occasion when piers began to crack under the weight of the

incomplete eastern arch, which seemed on the point of collapsing. Anthemius and Isidorus,

terrified at what had happened, carried the matter to the emperor, “having come to have no hope

in their technical skill. And straightaway the emperor, impelled by I know not what, but I

suppose by God (for is he not himself a master-builder?) commanded them to carry the curve of
this arch to its final completion. ‘For when it rests upon itself,’ he said, ‘it will no longer need the

props beneath it.’” This order was followed, and the arch was completed without further

incident. On another occasion, some columns began to throw off tiny flakes when a load of

masonry was placed on top of them. The emperor sensibly attributed this circumstance to the

dampness of parts of the masonry, and on his advice, it was removed and replaced when it had

dried.

Justinian spent much of his time on the site. Part of a metatorium, or imperial retiring room, was

built so that he could eat and rest during the day, and then a portico was added “so that, as often

as he liked, he might cross over and devote his time to the building, without being seen by

anyone” - or so legend relates. On his visits to the site, the emperor wore a white linen garment,

with a kerchief over his head, and carried a stick in his hand. The workmen were paid by the

imperial treasurer daily from a store of money deposited at the sundial, “and each of those who

carried stone received a piece of silver, lest any slackness should come upon them, or they

should be tempted to complain.” To encourage the workers, a heap of coins was mixed with the

earth each day, and in the evening when work was done, they were allowed to forage for them,

digging for what they could find.

Duration and Cost of Construction.

Justinian built his church regardless of expense. A timely addition to his funds came from the

confiscated estates of senators involved in the Nika Riot, but such sums were only a fraction of

the total cost, which Gibbon estimates was the equivalent of $2 million. Later estimates,

allowing for the cost of the gold, precious stones, crosses, sacred vessels, lamps, ornaments, and

other treasures, vary between the equivalent of $75 million and $150 million in modern currency.

According to an anonymous chronicler, “the revenues of 365 farms in Egypt, India, and all the
East and West were devoted to the maintenance of the Church. For each holy day was set aside

1,000 measures of oil, 300 measures of wine, and 1,000 sacramental loaves.”

Hagia Sophia, with all its decoration and ornament, was finished in the short space of five

years, ten months, and four days. The building itself was a unique architectural creation. It fused

the ideas of imperial Rome with those of Christian Byzantium, and for the first time, it achieved

for Christian architecture “a truly monumental form.” Its design marked the decline of the

basilica and the ascendancy of the dome. Over the centuries, the dome set on a circular building -

such as the Pantheon in Rome - had evolved into the dome set on a square, reduced to an octagon

and supported by a circle of arches. In Constantinople, it evolved into its final stage, the true

dome, which rested on the summits of four arches above four piers and was completed at the

corners by four triangular, curved pendentives.

Design and Construction Style

The great dome of Hagia Sophia is supported by a combination of barrel vaults and half domes.

The church provides an exposition of the potentialities of the arch, with its derivatives the vault

and the dome, undreamed of by the earlier architects of imperial Rome. In this sense, the

evolution of the dome as a unifying architectural feature seems to derive from the East. The

architects of Hagia Sophia were Greeks from Asia Minor, thus subject to influences not merely

Hellenistic but Oriental. It was this synthesis that inspired them to construct the church’s “huge

spherical dome,” which, in the words of Procopius, “seems not to rest on solid masonry, but to

cover the space with its golden dome suspended from Heaven.”

Space is indeed the essential element in the architectural conception of Hagia Sophia. Here

are spatial principles developed as never before, space floating in vistas, rising vertically,
expanding horizontally - a rhythm of voids concealing the function of the solid elements and

creating a light, open, flowing construction.

Hagia Sophia is no cruciform church, like those of the Christian West, but a domed

Christian basilica on a centralized plan. The main body of the church is enclosed within a

rectangle almost 70m (230ft) wide and 75m (245ft) long, with a projecting apse at the east end

and double narthexes preceded by an atrium at the west end. In the centre of this is a square

whose side’s measure exactly 100 Byzantine feet (32.2m). Over it sits the dome, carried on

pendentives which bridge between great semicular arches carried on piers standing just outside

the square. Other piers face these piers across the aisles to help resist the outward thrusts of the

dome to north and south. To the east and west the arrangement is different and was even more

novel than the use of pendentives to convert the central square to a circle.

The four arches of its nave rise to a height of seventy feet, and the dome resting on them rises to

a total height of 180 feet. Forty ribs and curved webs radiate from the center of the dome to forty

windows at its outside rim, whose diameter is more than 100 feet. Two half domes cover the

niches to east and west that serve respectively as the apse and the entrance bay. They too are

pierced with rounded windows and matched by many more in the flat tympana that fill the arches

to the north and south. Beneath the tympana, flanking the nave, are the colonnades of two broad,

vaulted side aisles that rise in two tiers, the upper tier making “fair upper galleries for the

women.” Such is the ordered “shell,” curvilinear and vertical, enclosing the great volume of

space that expands and spreads, as it were, in its own weightless spherical element.

The Splendour of Hagia Sophia

The church was an embodiment not only of space but of light. Light poured down from the

massive dome to make an open, luminous space of the central nave beneath. From the shadows
of the side aisles, the faithful could gaze in wonder, entranced by the divine radiance that shone

beyond and above and, when the time came to move forward, directly and individually upon

them. Symbolic or otherwise, the lighting of Hagia Sophia was of fabulous brilliance. By day,

the church was flooded diagonally with sunlight from the host of lunettes and round-headed

windows. By night, its artificial illumination was comparable to that of a midnight sun.

Inside the great church, the light was diffused by thousands of lamps and candelabra at differing

levels. Chains of beaten brass fell from the rim of the dome, “linked in alternating curves with

many windings” and terminating at some height above the floor in a great metal circle. From this

circle hung silver disks containing glass oil vases and crosses of metal that likewise bore lamps.

Together they formed a coronet above the heads of the congregation, a circling chorus of bright

lights.

The lightness and brightness of Hagia Sophia were enhanced by the gold mosaic that covered the

ceiling of the dome and the surfaces of the vaults and arches - four acres of it in all. This glitter

was further enhanced by the gleam and polish of the stones that shone from the floors and the

walls, for Justinian had procured marble and other fine stones from all parts of his empire - and

even from as far afield as the Atlantic coast of France. In response to an imperial command,

provincial officials had ransacked public baths, private houses, and the shrines of pagan idols for

stone. Nearer home, the quarries and marble workshops of Marmara Island were employed to

furnish cornices, capitals, and plaques.

The Floor.
The floors of the church were as generously paved with marble: “Gladly have the hills of

Proconnesus bent their backs to necessity. In parts too shimmers the polish of the Bosporus

stone, with white streaks on black.” Echoing the Silentiary, an anonymous chronicler compares
the shimmer of “huge white slabs” to “that of the sea or to the flowing water of rivers.” These

strips had a symbolic and ritualistic rather than a decorative purpose. In the exact center of the

nave was the omphalos, the “navel” of the earth. It was a piece of inlaid pavement, resembling

one that survives in the southeastern part of the nave and takes the form of a large disk of dark

marble within a square frame. Surrounding it are smaller disks of red marble, each on a ground

of green with mosaic ornament and each encircled by a band of Proconnesian marble.

The Challenge
The construction of a building like Hagia Sophia had never before been considered feasible on so

large a scale. It presented a new architectural challenge that required a new type of architect.

Such a project was beyond the scope of the master builders who had hitherto designed and

constructed most of the imperial buildings, and the emperor chose Anthemius and Isidorus for

the task because they had qualifications of a different kind. They were not mere builders, but

scholars and mathematicians trained in the theory of statics and dynamics - and, moreover, able

to translate them into practice as engineers through training and instructing their team of

technicians and craftsmen. The creation of Hagia Sophia was a task that called not merely for the

technical skill of the engineer but for the intellectual equipment of the scientist and the

imaginative perception of the artist; it called for a man who combined the daring of an innovator

with the aesthetic vision of a genius.

The Inauguration
On the day of this historic inauguration, Justinian emerged in state from his palace in a four-

horse chariot. He sacrificed 1,000 oxen, 6,000 sheep, 600 stags, and some 10,000 birds before

giving 30,000 bushels of meal to the poor and needy. Accompanied by the patriarch, he then

proceeded to the church. Entering its royal gates, the emperor released the patriarch’s hand,
which he had been holding and hastened on alone into the ambo. Extending his arms toward

heaven, he cried, “Glory to God, Who has deemed me worthy of fulfilling such a work. O

Solomon, I have surpassed thee.’’