Hagia Sophia remained the world's largest church for more than 500 years: consecrated in 537, it was surpassed only when the abbey church of Cluny in France was completed in the 12th century.

537

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The event

• Hagia Sophia consecrated537 · Constantinople. Justinian I built in five years a cathedral in Constantinople crowned by a vast dome about 31 m across; for nearly a thousand years it was the largest church in Christendom. After 1453 it became a mosque, in 1934 a museum and in 2020 a mosque again.

6th century

More amazing facts

• 525 · 731 For five centuries nobody knew they were living in AD anything.
• 532 Emperor Justinian was nearly overthrown by sports fans.
• 532 · 537 Constantinople owes Hagia Sophia to rioting sports fans.
• 532 During the Nika riots it was his wife who stopped Justinian from fleeing.
• 536 · 541 536 is called one of the worst years to be alive: volcanic haze dimmed the sun across the Northern Hemisphere, and five years later the Plague of Justinian began.
• 537 Byzantine sources claimed that Hagia Sophia's Imperial Gate was made from the timber of Noah's Ark. The seven-metre, 6th-century door was used only by the emperor and his retinue.

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