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Architecture

Domes and stone: from Hagia Sophia to Sinan

The dome of Hagia Sophia, completed in 537, was the starting point: about 31 metres across, rising 55.6 metres inside, and one of the first to rest entirely on pendentives. When it was finished, the building enclosed the largest interior space in the world. Roughly a thousand years later the architect Sinan, chief architect of the Ottoman state in the sixteenth century, carried the idea to its limit. More than 300 major works are credited to him, from mosques and madrasas to bathhouses and bridges. In Istanbul he built the Süleymaniye Mosque between 1550 and 1557 on a hill above the Golden Horn, with a dome 53 metres high and 26.5 metres wide, exactly half its height; it is the city's largest Ottoman-era mosque. In Edirne he built the Selimiye Mosque between 1568 and 1575, whose dome, 31.28 metres across, matches Hagia Sophia's and rises slightly higher. Sinan saw it as his masterpiece, and it became a World Heritage site in 2011. His apprentices later designed the Blue Mosque. Visit outside prayer times, dress modestly and look up.

0.6 m

Height inside Hagia Sophia's dome

0 m

Height of the Süleymaniye dome

0.28 m

Diameter of the Selimiye dome