Byzantine Architecture
...e social and economic. Hopefully, there are still ruins in villages throughout the Byzantine empire that can be observed and examined. Although many villages were poor, and the monuments were not maintained, historians may find evidence about the social and economic life of that ages. The fourth approach is the symbolic or ideological. Church structure represented the cosmos. If there were three windows in the apse, that meant the Holy Trinity. The apse was either the cave of Bethlehem or the cave in which Christ was buried. Some people argue that the church of St.Polyeuktos in Constantinople, was meant both in measurements and decoration, to reproduce Solomon’s Temple. The misunderstanding with the symbolic approach is that once we have granted the celestial meaning of the dome, it is difficult to use it further. It is not helpful to explain the multiplicity of forms that the historians have to deal with. In Byzantium there was a differentiation in architectural styles, which allows as now to speak about architectural schools. Even in our days, the term school is not recommended because it is not clear, but we use it for practical reasons. Dome, a specific type of Orthodox church could be helpful for someone to understand in a more sufficient way the previous symbolic way of approach. The dome was put to its most spectacular use in Constantinople, in the emperor Justinian's great Church of the Divine Wisdom, Hagia Sophia. The architects, Anthemius and Isidorus, created a gigantic, sublime space bounded on the lower levels by colonnades and walls of veined marble and overhead by membranous vaults that seem to expand like parachutes opening against the wind. The climactic dome has forty closely spaced windows around its base and on sunny days appears to float on a ring of light. Hagia Sophia is sometimes called a "domed basilica," but the phrase minimizes the vast differences between the dynamism of its design and the comparatively static spaces of a typical basilica. No church would be constructed to rival Hagia Sophia; but the dome was established as a hallmark of Byzantine architecture (although basilicas continued to be built), and it infused church design with a more mystical geometry. In a domed church one is always conscious of the hovering hemisphere, which determines a vertical axis around which the subordinate spaces are grouped and invites symbolic identification with the "dome" of heaven. Hagia Sophia is the supreme masterpiece of Byzantine architecture. It‘s spacious nave covered by a lofty central dome carried on pententives, a device not previously applied in monumental construction. Pendentives make possible support of the dome on a square framework of four huge equal arches rest resting on huge piers. The arches at the east and west are extended and buttressed by great half domes, while the half domes in turn are carried on smaller semi domed exedra. A vast oblong interior, 31 meters by 81 meters , is thus created from a succession of domical elements that build up to the main dome, 31 meters in diameter and 56 meters high, in which a corona of 40 arched windows sheds a flood of light on the interior. At the east end of the nave is the vaulted sanctuary apse and at the west end a great narthex or vestibule, beyond which an exonarthex opens to the forecourt, or atrium. Flanking the nave to the north and south are side aisles with galleries over them. Their massive vaults, carried at both levels by monolithic columns of green and white marble and purple porphyry, serve as buttresses to receive the thrust of the great dome and its supporting arches. The vast interior is thus wholly free of suggestion of ponderous load, and its effect is that of a weightless golden shell that seems to possess a miraculous inherent stability. In this one structural organism the Roman methods of construction are epitomized, modified and enriched by new aesthetic theories and realized in strikingly colorful materials and ornamental techniques. These materials and techniques are often considered Eastern, but they are in fact the logical outgrowth of trends already apparent in Roman imperial buildings of the first three centuries . All interior surfaces are sheathed with polychrome marbles and gold mosaic, encrusted upon the brick core of the structure; most of the magnificent figure mosaics have been cleaned and restored to view. Externally, the broad, smooth surfaces of stuccoed walls and the great unconcealed masses of vaults and domes pile up impressively. Nowadays, a team leaded by Antonia Moropoulou from the National Technical University of Athens is making a research in order to understand the extremely high strength of the dome, in a period were architecture was not enough developed. Moropoulou's team analyzed the chemical composition of the Byzantine cement using an electron microscope. They found it contained a calcium silicate matrix similar to that found in Portland cement, a mixture that was not commercially developed until 1824. This was no accident though, according to team member Ahmet Cakmak of Princeton University in New Jersey. “The Byzantines knew exactly what they were doing,” he believes. “They were very advanced scientists.” Cakmak thinks the ancient engineers deliberately added volcanic ash or other silica-rich materials to their mortar based on limestone and crushed brick. This reacted with the limestone and water to produce a silica matrix that can absorb seismic energy that would otherwise fracture the building. So far, Hagia Sophia, which has been used as both a Christian church and a mosque over the years, has withstood quakes of up to magnitude 7.5 on the Richter scale. Another equally important architectural type of that ages is the "Cross-in-square" plan, adopted in Constantinople especially in the later ninth century, after the Iconoclastic Controversy had ended (about which more will be said). In the simplest terms, this kind of church is cubical on the first level and cruciform on the second, with a dome resting on a cylinder at the intersection of the arms of the cross, and smaller domes or vaults over the four corners of the cube, between the arms of the cross. The chambers flanking the central apse on the north and south are the prothesis and diaconicon respectively. The former is where the priest prepares the Eucharistic elements before the Liturgy proper begins, and the latter is a place of storage for liturgical utensils, books, and vestments. After the sixth century, Byzantine churches were of modest size but proportionately taller. In the cross-in-square and related plans, the geometric interplay of the spatial units around the domed core compensated for the loss of effects dependent on large dimensions. On the exterior, builders exploited the ornamental possibilities of the brickwork and stonework, producing intricate surface patterns. The overall effect inside and out was one of intimacy. Byzantine architecture after Justinian ’s day, lost its unity. It may be observed a tendency for independen...