Byzantine And Pantheon

The Roman and Byzantine empires are widely regarded as two of the most powerful empires in human history. With large religious empires comes large extravagant architecture. The Pantheon, a temple created for the worship of the many Roman Gods was built by the emperor Hadrian in Rome from 118 to 125 CE. The Hagia Sophia was built by the emperor Justinian as a Christian church in Constantinople during the Byzantine Empire from 532 to 537 CE. The Hagia Sophia was designed by Anthemius of Tralles, a mathematician, and Isidorus of Miletus, a physicist. It’s important to note that the minarets on the Hagia Sophia were added later by the Turks to transform the church into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest in 1453 CE. Both of these structures are
The Pantheon, while being a central plan church, has a typical porch of a Roman church and an intermediate block transitioning from the porch to the cella. There was a large forecourt leading up to the Pantheon, which gave patrons a frontal view of the building. From the forecourt, patrons would climb a set of stairs up onto a podium where the temple rests. The interior or the Pantheon also has niches around the circumference of the interior for Romans to worship each of their respective Gods. The Hagia Sophia is a built as a divided central plan bisected by a real central plan. The nave of the Hagia Sophia is an oval because of this odd combination plan and to show off the amazing dome above the nave. The Hagia Sophia also has a double narthex, which is quite similar to the porch in the Pantheon, except that it is entirely on the inside of the building and because it is a double narthex, it’s extra long. Unlike the Pantheon, the Hagia Sophia was meant to hold large religious services in. Because of this, there is a very clearly defined side aisle and
While they each have similar building plans, they each have different ways of supporting their magnificent domes and different ways of illuminating the interior of the buildings. Each building is built using the general idea of a central plan and each has a porch or, similarly, a narthex. Unlike the Hagia Sophia, the Pantheon uses a combination of smart use of material and is supported by a drum around the theoretical sphere of which the dome is the top half of. The Hagia Sophia utilizes pendentives and smaller buttressing domes. In each of these structures, the mode of lighting is an incredibly important part of the character of the buildings. Gold backed glass tesserae are used in the Hagia Sophia to create an otherworldly, almost heavenly feel by reflecting light from the 40 windows in the clerestory of the dome. An oculus in the top of the Pantheon provides natural light that reflects off of the polished colored marble on the interior of the building. These two buildings, while visually similar, are incredibly different in the feeling that patrons feel. The Pantheon amazes visitors with the incredible openness of the space, which compared to other buildings from the Roman empire was quite shocking. The Hagia Sophia, moreover, wows visitors with the amount of light that pours into the building and reflects off of the tesserae, bringing visitors into an almost heavenly sphere.