At the junction of Asia and Europe in Istanbul, formerly the Roman outpost called Constantinople, rests the most famous building of the illustrious Byzantine emperor Justinian, the Hagia Sophia. The Hagia Sophia, translated as ‘Holy Wisdom’ in Greek, was one of the most original monuments in the history of architecture (Harris, 2009). The church, known simply as ‘the Great Church’ by the townspeople, “fulfilled all the aesthetic, symbolic, and functional needs of the Byzantine Church” (Stokstad, 2004, 48).I contend that the church of Hagia Sophia was a building that represented the most advanced technical knowledge of its time and overall was a building that was substantially advanced, both in its construction, design, and mosaics
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