"The Church presents a most glorious spectacle, extraordinary to those who behold and altogether incredible to those who are told of it. In height it rises to the very heavens and overtops the neighbouring houses like a ship anchored among them, appearing above a city it adorns and forms a part of... It is distinguished by indescribable beauty, excelling both in its size and in the harmony of its measures..."

Procopius - AD.537

Ohmigod, that's a valid reaction to this place. We're talking about a building that was the largest enclosed space on the face of the planet for over a millenia. That makes the long jump record look a little short lived. I sometimes wonder if the mosques that Istanbul is famous for are, in some small way, a reaction to this building. It certainly seems to dominate the Sultanahmet Mosque placed opposite it and squats, massively, looking out over the Bosphorous Straits. A host of worthy publications have been written about this structure and we can't hope to compete with erudite scholarship on this page but, what the hell, lets have a go.

Go and see it. This bears repeating, go and see it. If you're there in the summer go early in the morning when there's no one about. Sneak up to the gallery, making your way up the ramps hidden in the walls. This will give you an idea of the scale of the place, they have ramps hidden in the walls. Then see how long it is before you forget that you're walking around 40 feet above the floor on bits of stone that have been standing there a very long time indeed. Have a look at the windows, especially the ones that aren't windows anymore. That gives you an idea of the extent of the work done over the last couple of thousand years to keep the place upright (you're standing in the third version I think).

Remember that you're standing in a Byzantine building. The Byzantines were a bit keen on candle light, well light in general, but candlelight in particular. This explains a little about their fondness for mosaics, the tessarae, I think that's the right word, or little cubes of glass, could be positioned to reflect the candlelight inside the church and create a sparkly effect that went down very well. Originally, a dangerous word to use here, 4 acres of the interior of the church were covered with gold mosaics, producing a light which was compared by contemporaries to the midday sun. You can find a fair bit of this 1500 year old decoration and if you keep your eyes open and look up you'll see it. A lot of the mosaics you see have been covered and uncovered at various times during the history of the great church and you can't help but wonder what is still hidden here.

There are some incredible stories attached to the place, as you might expect.

"The most hideous scenes of all, however, were enacted in the church of the Holy Wisdom. Matins were already in progress when the berserk conquerors were heard approaching. Immediately the great bronze doors were closed; but the Turks soon smashed their way in. The poorer and more unattractive of the congregation were massacred on the spot; the remainder were lashed together and led off to the Turkish camps, for their captors to do with as they liked. As for the officiating priests, they continued the Mass as long as they could before being killed at the high altar; but there are among the Orthodox faithful those who still believe that at the last moment one or two of them gathered up the most precious of the patens and chalices and mysteriously disappeared into the southern wall of the sanctuary. There they will remain until the day Constantinople becomes a Christian city once again, when they will resume the liturgy at the point at which it was interrupted."

John Julius Norwich, writing of the fall of Constantinople in his work 'Byzantium - the decline and fall'