All language subtitles for Byzantium The Lost Empire 1

The Eye of All the World, the ancients
called it,

the heart of a lost empire that had
lasted for a thousand years and more.

Saint Sofia, The Church of the
Divine Wisdom,

this was their crowning glory,
the glory of Byzantium.

The vanished Empire of Byzantium,
born of pagan Rome,

Byzantium,

the dream of a Christian Roman Empire
that stretched from Spain to Syria.

Byzantium,

whose influence ran from northern
Russia down to Nubia up on the Apennine.

Byzantium, gateway to a lost chapter
of our past.

The Orient Express, I first traveled
this line in the sixties.

I bought a ticket at Waterloo Station
in London

for a ride to Istanbul in Turkey,

and a life long fascination.

It took three days to get there.
It was hell on wheels, really,

goats in the corridor and communism
out the window.

And, all of a sudden, the train swung
round the bend and bang,

the orient hit me in the face.

A great golden city by the sea,
set between the east and west,

you could see it had been the center
of the world.

It was astonishing.

But, come to Istanbul,

and underneath, the magic ruins of
the lost Empire of Byzantium.

The Orient Express stopped here,
in the heart of the old city.

I got off it in clouds of smoke and
steam,

haunted by the ghosts of Greta Garbo
and Agatha Christie

by a thousand spies and archeologists,

by the kings and courtesans,
of prewar Europe.

Istanbul, one of the very greatest of
Islamic cities,

with the monuments of the conquering
Turkish sultans

who had ruled here since 1453,
dominating its skyline.

Underneath, though, are much older
ghosts.

Brushed each day by people of the
living city, the ruins of Constantinople,

the capital city of the Empire of
Byzantium,

Istanbul, Constantinople, two names,
new and old for the same grand city.

Sixteen centuries ago,
in the year, 330,

the Emperor Constantine, the first
Christian Roman emperor,

chose this city, then a small Greek
town to be his capital.

No one quite knows why.

One thing is sure though,

the great warrior emperors had left
Rome and the cities of the west forever.

This mosque, the mosque of the Turkish
sultan who conquered the city,

is built straight on the foundations
of the most ancient burial church

of the mysterious emperors of old
Byzantium.

What, then, was this most ancient half
forgotten empire, the Empire of

Byzantium?

Byzantium, that magic spicy word.

Now, imagine that the empires of
Greece and Rome had never died

but had been fused together in a single
empire, set between the east and west.

And, imagine that the emperors of
this kingdom,

the sacred emperors could be torn to
pieces by the mobs in the street,

emperors who could mutilate their
courtiers and children,

who killed their priest and blinded
whole armies of invaders.

Yet, emperors whose artists made some
of the most finest, the most

exquisite images the world has ever
seen,

vision of heaven and earth, sublime
architectures,

copied by everybody from the kaliphs
of Baghdad to the popes of Rome,

the kings of Germany and the tribes
of Nubia,

visions of heaven's order and earthly
power

that sill lie deep within the modern
world.

Just as this mosque, the Conqueror's
Mosque, stands on the ruins of

Byzantium,
so do we all.

This is where the Empire of Byzantium
began,

beside this ancient column here on
Main Street,

a lonely ancient relic in a modern
city.

In the year of our Lord 330, on a
lovely May morning,

the great procession came down this
road.

It was the highway of an ancient city
called Byzantium.

And, the procession was led by the
great Roman Emperor, Constantine.

And he brought with him, a bunch of
priests, pagan and Christian ones,

and they were all holding an
incredible collection of relics.

There were twelve baskets filled with
crumbs, the residue it was said

of our Lord's miracle of the loaves
and fishes.

There was the very axe that Noah made
the Ark with

and there was a statue that the

Emperor himself had brought
secretly from Rome,

the statue of the Greek god, Paris.

And at the exact moment prescribed
by astrologers,

they buried their relics just over
there, at the foot of the column,

seven drums of palfrey brought from
the Egyptian deserts.

And, Constantine renamed the city
Constantinople and claimed it as

the capital of his grand new empire.

You know, over the years the column
itself became to be seen as a relic

and the Byzantines, that's the people

who lived in this city,
called it Christ's Nail,

because they thought that the great
golden statue of Constantine upon the top

had something of one of the nails in
Christ's crucifixion built into it

and every year on the New Year's Day,
that's the first of September,

the Byzantines turned out at the
bottom of this column

and sung hymns to Saint Constantine,

the founder of their city and the
mighty empire called Byzantium.

Constantinople was designed to be the
center of the Christian world,

the center of Christ's government on
earth.

These great cups were made to hold
the mystery of Christ's blood inside

the city's churches,

churches glowing with Roman gold
and ancient holy images,

images that for a thousand years flooded
right through Europe and the east.

This, then, is Byzantium's first
story.

The story of how in two short
centuries the dream was made,

the dream that was Byzantium.

Constantine, the Christian emperor,

the man who took the faith of Jesus
and the God of Abraham

and created the beginning of the
governments and churches in

which the west still trusts.

He was crowned, they say,
in York, in England, in 306.

For forty years, he killed foes and
family alike

and when he died, people were so
frightened of him that no one touched

his body for a week.

This was the extent of Constantine's
ambition,

the late Roman Empire with
Constantinople, not Rome as its capital.

And in the far north, in Germany,
the City of Trier,

the great imperial garrison, it still
shows something of what ancient

Constantinople used to look like.

The city gate still guarding
The Main Road into town,

a great grim gate, like the rest of
the northern frontier,

Trier was continuously threatened by
Huns and Goths and Vandals

and a dozen other warrior nations.

Constantine The Great, the emperor,
himself,

would have walked down this same
passage sixteen hundred years ago.

These vaults and arches are the
architecture of his time.

Once you're through the gate,

most Roman towns look much the same.

They were, if you like, a sort of an
abstract idea of a city

and they were stamped on every
landscape from Yorkshire to Syria.

You can still sense their design in a
thousand old world cities

and in the new world, too, from
Washington to San Francisco.

Planners still use parts of the same
old patterns.

All Roman towns had roads like this
one,

wide thoroughfares that took you from
the country to the heart of the city.

This one is at Palmyra in the
Syrian Dessert.

In Constantinople it was called,
quite simply, The Main Road.

Now, what you've got to see is that
behind all these columns

there are little rows of shops running
down the sides of the street,

butchers, bakers, candle makers,
all sorts of people.

In Constantinople, it would have had
the goods of the known world,

Africa, China, the Baltic, everything
was for sale.

Just imagine the emperor is coming
in in triumph, he's won a war,

he's coming through the gate,

the shop keepers have been told to
dust down the streets,

flowers have been strewn all over
the pavement,

roses are raining down upon him,

there are rugs and silks fluttering in
the breezes all around him,

the whole town has been sucked out
to come and see him.

Behind of course, behind the main
street are the town houses,

servants, soldiers, all the people.

There were taverns, brothels,
everything in a city.

And in amongst those,

studded in amongst those were those

huge buildings that
Constantine had to build

before his city could really be called
a Roman metropolis.

It's only a little building, but it was
actually the heart of ancient Palmyra.

It's the center, the oval office where
government was conducted,

where the town elders met, where plots
were hatched, all that sort of thing.

Of course, in Constantine's great
imperial cities,

this would have been a vast long hall,

and quiet often in the central hall of
government,

great Constantine himself would have
sat where now the altars of

Christian churches stand,

because this is basically the same
building.

In the year 360,

Constantine's son built a magnificent
church at Constantinople

especially for the drama of imperial
communion.

Next door, those same pious emperors
built a giant racetrack,

The Hippodrome.

You can still see part of its outline
in the streets.

And here at last,

around this old Egyptian obelisk,

you can discover something of the
atmosphere of ancient Constantinople,

the heart of old Byzantium.

This stone is like a giant mirror,

reflecting all the life that once went
on around it.

There's the emperor and his family,

Constantine's successors come to the
royal box to start a chariot race.

There's the obelisk in the middle to
the race track

and the chariots, too, eight of them
running all at once.

You would need a lot of luck to win.

This place wasn't just a race track,
though.

This is a place where people met their
emperor and his court.

It's the air, the space of Byzantium,
a hundred thousand people roaring

as new emperors are presented to them
as captives of foreign wars are

brought and thrown at the feet of
the emperor.

It's the old parliament.

It's the real heart of Byzantium.

And, that scene there, where've you
seen it before?

Look at it carefully.

The emperor is in the middle with his
family, just like God.

Around them, stand the army and the
court, just like the saints.

Beneath them,

begging mercy, are Byzantium's
enemies, the damned.

It's a grand last judgment right here
on earth,

with the emperor playing God.

So, that's it really,

the emperor brings happiness and
harmony.

The theater brings luck and victory.

This is the center of the world,

an image, you might say of heaven
on earth.

So, if we had pushed open the gates
of the palace that once stood

beside The Hippodrome,

we would've really been opening the
earthly gates of paradise.

Arcades of gold and marble,

silver boats on pools of mercury,

silk carpets, golden thrones

and halls of palfrey and bowls,

all are gone,

only echoes of them still remain in
Syria, in Italy.

Once though Constantinople held the
palace of all palaces,

The Palace of the Christian Empire.

Church, Hippodrome and palace,

Constantine had made a sacred engine
that would power Byzantium forever.

To protect the Holy City of
Constantinople,

the emperors of Byzantium built the
largest city walls in all the world.

Armies that controlled the lives of
millions road from these gates.

And, through them passed the produce
of an empire.

The whole history of this city is in
this gate,

the Great Golden Gate of Imperial
Byzantium.

You see that great high span at the
top?

That was once open to the skies.

For six hundred years, emperors and
armies road through that gate

in triumph,

coming back from wars against the
Persians, the Arabs,

the Bulgarians, the Russians.

And then, there was an earthquake

and the gate was blocked.

And, that final gate at the bottom
that even a cavalry man couldn't

come through on a horse,

that gate was built in the final years
of Byzantium.

So, this is a magic gate,

it's a gate of legends.

They say its wooden doors were covered
with sheets of gold to give the

gate its name.

They say that the very last emperor,
killed fighting on these walls,

is buried beneath these stones,

waiting for a call to take the city
once again.

So, it's a gate of legend

but above all it speaks of imperial
Byzantine power.

Power to control innumerable lives.

You know, there are thousands of
blocks in this gate

and each one of them, each tiny mark

upon them, made by an
individual human hand.

Endless lives absorbed in making
millions of these blocks,

enough to build the whole city of
Constantinople.

Now, this snowy marble, strange gray
lines running through,

is found all over the Byzantine
empire,

from Spain to Syria and back to
Constantinople.

But, it comes from one island only,

one tiny island in the sea.

Southwest of Istanbul, three days
sailing on an ancient slave ship,

is the Isle of Marmara,

its very name means stone.

In the first centuries of Byzantium,

slaves in their tens of thousands
worked in these marble hills.

How the Byzantines loved marble.

In marble, says a priest,

God trapped fields of flowers and
mountain forests,

and fish and fruit, and melting snows.

The ancient blocks, still strewn
across the keys,

hint of the frantic energy that was
once used to move their precious stone.

Still inside the modern quarries,
an ancient stone that weighs around

a hundred tons,

part of it an enormous column

to memorialize the military victories
of Byzantium.

If it were finished,

it would have had a spiral staircase
cut in it and rows of sculptured

soldiers on it's turning surface.

It's still here, though.

It cracked as it was quarried.

In ancient times these quarries were
called The Quarries of the Mother of God.

It might just as well have been called

The Quarries of the Mother of
Constantinople.

The whole city was made here

and it was pre-fab city.

It wasn't just sent off in blocks,
everything was finished.

If these had been finished, and gone
to Constantinople,

each one would have been lettered,
it had its exact place in everyone

of the ancient buildings of the city.

This, for example is the very tip of
a building that would have looked

like a Roman temple.

Modern quarry masters tell me that

they find the best new seams of marble
in the hills beside the ancient stones.

This would be a good spot then.

A giant lonely column shaft.

I've seen that same shape,

so called peacock's feather pattern

cut on a broken column lying right on
The Main Street of Old Istanbul.

This was once a marble square on a
highway at the middle of Constantinople.

I don't suppose the Turks of modern
Istanbul

think much about ancient Byzantine
victories.

Yet, there's still some fragments here
of that great memorial column

that made it all the way from Marmara.

The ghosts of the imperial armies
still lining the boots of their

processions through the city.

Just as all the ancient roads and
sea lanes ran through the empire

to Constantinople,

so did the rivers of the region,

channeled into great aqueducts
bringing treasured water to a thirsty city.

Underneath the town, cut deep into its
hill top, an eerie underworld,

some fifteen centuries old, fresh
water cisterns

so that the Byzantines could bath just
like the Romans did, in marble halls.

And, everything made with the dazzling
technology of ancient Rome,

father of Byzantium.

Marble columns,

high brick vaults,

the dark forest of Byzantium beneath
modern Istanbul.

Those Greek letters harrowed into the
column with a chisel point,

the marks of one of Marmara's
quarrymen.

Food too, flooded into the enlarging
city,

what a vast logistic exercise and
earthly miracle,

supporting Constantinople's half a
million people, Europe's biggest city,

and everything of course by hand.

There was no food industry,

everything was carried here in boats
and carts.

The finest fish, the Byzantines
believed, were caught beside the

emperor's palace,

between the rising of the Pleiades
and the setting of the blood red

star, Arcturus.

Colors, smells and textures of the
ancient everyday,

the raw ingredients of Byzantine
experience,

the world of the ancient
Mediterranean.

Just like the people of modern
Istanbul,

the Byzantines loved fresh bread and
fresh vegetables.

For the bread, at least the grain
for it, they brought from their

province of Egypt.

The vegetables, they grew themselves,

in little plots beside their houses in
the city,

in fields in a great green swath that
ran for mile upon mile down the

walls of the city.

And, here's still a bit of it today,

growing more or less the same crops.

Look at the garlic, the onions, the
dill, the dill they used to flavor fish,

especially those heavy yellow fish
soups they so love.

This, well this is a ecological
Byzantine delight here.

There's three or four different sorts
of crops.

There's rocket for salad there's chard
and cabbage again.

All sorts of things, mint all growing
together in a great profusion.

And, at the end of it all, lettuce to
calm your stomach.

So, when the peasants in the fields,
just stopped there for a moment

and straightened their backs

to watch the lords of Byzantium, those
great history makers riding by,

they too, could think, "We're not
having such a bad time either."

The Byzantine economy was based
on the classic Mediterranean diet,

wine, grain, cheese, vegetables, and
olives.

Olive oil was a staple.

It was Byzantium's fuel.

It lit streets, and homes and
lighthouses.

It oiled carts and cured baldness,
and it was used for cooking.

In its first century, Constantinople's
oil came mostly from northern Syria.

This is a wonderful thing.

It's a piece of Byzantine industrial
archeology.

It's a factory for making olive oil.

This is a marvelous little place.

I'll show you how it works. It's
very sensible, very logical.

The olives were picked from the trees,

they came down that
little street in wagons,

they were tipped down through a

window, and they fell into
that trough down there.

They were then scooped out of the
trough

and put into this mill.

This is a great oil press for the
berries.

You see this drum?

There were two of those, they fitted
on end in here, side by side,

a bough between them,

and four or five men pushed round the
outside

and reduced the olives, the skin and
the stone into a sort of

horrible messy pulp.

That, then, was taken out of there and
laid in these circles here.

Now, this thing in the wall here,

held a great beam that ran through the
air.

And, hanging above this was a huge
cylinder of stone.

That, then, was slowly dropped onto
the massive olive paste

and the oil dripped down into these
tanks.

Not the end, because, this after all,
although it's cold pressed, is

actually a very impure oil at this
moment.

So, they take it out of here and they
put it into this tank here.

Now, this tank has already got water
in it,

so as they pour the olive oil in,
it floats to the surface,

all the impurities go down to the
bottom.

And, see this little trench here?

A vital piece of gourmet equipment

because this is where the very finest
oil ran from that impurity tank

down into this tank

to make fine clear olive oil for the
tables of Byzantium.

This is Sergilla, one of three hundred
ancient Syrian villages,

in the Byzantine olive groves,

provincial Byzantium preserved in
fine cut stone.

Just off the main square is the public
bath house, the forerunner of the

Turkish bath.

Saint John cast whores and devils out
of one of these.

This is Sergilla's cafe cum town hall
down on Main Street.

Old soldiers and half mad saints got
drunk in bars like this,

money lenders, magistrates and
merchants did their business here.

Can you hear the farmers, tough
independent homesteaders,

chuckling about the prices that the
city folk were paying for their olive oil?

Life was very good.

There was time for both the devil and
his and for the church and all its works.

If you could come up this path,
fifteen hundred years ago on the

first of September,

you'd have been accompanied by
thousands of people shouting and

singing praises to the Lord.

It was the feast day of Saint Simon
of the Pillar.

The first place these processions came
to was this great baptistery.

Ten thousand people, whole cities full

have been baptized in this room
in a single day

and then out they all went praising

the Lord, onwards to the
Church of the Saint.

It's Roman architecture still of
course,

arches, vaults, and column tops.

But, now, there's Christian crosses,
too.

The ancient forms are turning into
something else.

See, the wind of faith is bending all
those ancient pagan patterns.

This is the start of what would become
Byzantium.

And at the church's hub,

the remains of a fifty foot column
on which Saint Simon lived.

So, who was this weird man who
lived up a pillar

and half the world had come to see
him

and when he died, they built this
beautiful dancing church in his honor?

Well, as a young man, Simon, had worn
clothes so rough they make him bleed.

Then he dreamt up the idea of chaining
his left leg to a large rock.

That, before he went up the column.

But, Simon wasn't a nutter,

Simon had tremendous presence like
an emperor.

He sat still and silent

and in his contest between flesh and
the devil,

it seemed to most people that he was
beyond touch.

And, there he was on his pillar, half
way between heaven and earth.

A perfect man to settle disputes.

So they used Simon.

The farmers of Syria would come here
when they were in arguments

and he would settle one against the
other.

The Bedouin, Arab Bedouin came to
see him too.

The emperor used to come to see him

and always he acted as a balance in
society,

such a terrifying balance

that if he cursed somebody from the
top of his pillar

a rock would explode next to the
unfortunate individual.

So, Simon, it was a vital element in
this new Christian empire.

An element which somehow had taken
the old stern order of the Roman age

and left it half way between heaven
and earth.

In eastern Mediterranean,

in the warm heartland of the pagan
world,

the first Christian empire, the empire
of Byzantium,

had found its balance.

It was a good life, a rich life and
there was peace and plenty.

You know it always strikes me as
funny, when people talk about the

fall of the Roman empire.

After all, standing here in
Constantinople,

it just got richer, and richer, and
richer, didn't fall at all.

I suppose, really, it's because Rome
fell.

In fact Rome didn't fall,

it just got poor.

Constantine had moved the capital
from the great old cities of the

west to here in the east.

And, with him moved the government,
the generals, the artists, and the architects,

everybody who made the empire moved
with him.

So, in 475, that's twenty five years
after these walls were finished,

the last Roman emperor of the west,

a young man, a junior emperor,

sent the crown back here to
Constantinople, to new Rome.

This was the new city,

and, I suppose really the story about
the fall of the Roman empire,

that's the western empire,

was really invented in the Renaissance
by the popes

who really wanted to get the idea of
a pagan empire falling and a

Christian empire of the west rising.

They're good propagandist,

like Raphael and Michelangelo to
budge them on their way.

But the truth is, the real truth is
that old Rome, ancient Rome,

had been modeled on the great cities
of the east.

When Antioch and Alexandria,
all those great marble cities,

so when you say Rome fell, it didn't
fall at all.

It simply went back home again.

After the last emperor of the west
resigned,

Byzantium lost most of its European
provinces,

only for a century though.

By the year 555,

brand new Byzantine armies had
ruthlessly re-conquered some of them,

and in northern Italy, at Ravenna,

they left triumphant decorations in
this church as a memorial

The man there is Justinian, the
emperor,

who two hundred years after
Constantine completely remade the

Roman empire.

The man who made Byzantium,

he was a man they said who was gentle
and approachable, a man who never

showed his anger,

a man, who in the quietest of voices,
could order the death of thousands.

He didn't organize the empire
completely by himself, though.

His great strength was as a manager.

Those strong faces that surround him

were the faces of a great team of men
he picked together.

And, he didn't really care whether
they were Roman patricians or

from the humblest, roughest
backgrounds.

He, himself had actually come from a
completely illiterate peasant family

in Serbia.

Justinian though was only half the
picture.

The other half was that most
remarkable woman over there,

the Empress Theodora.

They married each other for love and
they stayed together for

twenty-five years.

And, look at the young ladies of the
court there,

they're looking sideways,
a bit nervous,

you see it's not proper for young
girls to look straight at you,

not unless you are a woman of power
like Theodora.

But, that is actually a portrait of a
woman dying of cancer.

Within two or three months of this
mosaic being finished, Theodora was dead.

Justinian ruled for another twenty
years.

He never remarried

and he went to her grave and lit
candles until he was a very old man.

Although Justinian and Theodora
restored the Roman empire,

this was no longer the ancient
classical world.

They lived in a different age.

They spoke Eastern Greek instead
of Roman Latin

and viewed the world in very different
ways.

Look at these sculptures.

They're probably the last classical
figures ever made.

They were made actually in the
generations just before Justinian.

Now, at first glance, you might think
they're just part of those usual old

classical things hanging
around museums,

big stony Alexanders and Caesars all
strutting their stuff.

But, they're not like that at all.

They're new, they're different.

Something else is going on.

It's very simple work,

very realistic in a way,

little light cut lines,

and a day old beard, lightly chiseled
on the hard marble,

as if to emphasize his transience,
it's insubstantiality.

These people are pensive, sad, and
rather wise.

After all, hadn't the saints and
bishops told them that

this life, this material world was
only an illusion.

So, naturally, these statues don't
strut their stony stuff like

Alexander or the emperors of Rome.

They are not heroic descriptions of
skin and bone and straining muscle.

Each man stands inside his own
mysterious inner space that each

one of must occupy,

and from that space, they look outwards
from the soul towards the heavens.

As you might expect, if you should
move around them,

solid bulk of marble and humanity seem
to be nothing more than an illusion.

These brand new people, though,
were clever and inventive, too.

Many of them were drawn here,
to the center of the empire.

Most of Byzantium's brightest brains

were packed into these tiny streets
and apartments that surrounded the

palace complex in Constantinople.

They were people here come to seek
their fortune of the court from

all over the empire

from Spain, from Egypt, from Syria.

There were mathematicians, lawyers,
doctors,

scientists, magicians, alchemists,

all sorts of weird and wonderful
people packed and living tightly

together in these little streets.

In the 520's and 530's

there was a great excitement bubbling
up inside this unique community.

Justinian and Theodora had planned to
build new palaces and churches,

such as the world had never seen.

The ancient forms, arches, vaults and
column tops were being used

for something revolutionary,

something that will be echoed in ten
thousand different churches for

a thousand years and more,

the style that is Byzantium.

This seaside church, set right beside
the palace was made for some of

Theodora's favorite priests.

It was probably the work of one

Anthemius, famous
physician and mathematician.

This is where the style began.

Theodora built the church

to hold the bloodstained cloaks and
bodies of two martyred soldiers,

Sergius and Bacchus,

the army's patron saints.

Now it's a mosque.

Anthemius' subtle compass has
transformed all the usual ancient forms,

squares become circles,
circles octagons

and all around a single central point,
space spins into ever smaller spaces.

It's as perfectly mysterious as the
finest natural crystal,

the walls, the columns seem to be
nothing more than an illusion and

simply fade away.

Just look at that great big glorious
dome like a huge melon divided

into sixteen sections

and held by eight wonderful swinging
arches on those extraordinary

V-shaped pillars

and twenty-eight columns through the
church.

It's like a vast net of stone and
brick slung over this central space,

this strange mysterious space for
the imperial communion.

It's a wonderful piece of architecture
and it solved all sorts of problems

that you can't even see.

You see, those low domes exert
tremendous pressure

and there's a force in this building
to push the bottom of it out

so the whole thing comes crashing
down.

Now, Anthemius, like every other
architect,

has used stone here as lintels, and
beams, as stress and strains,

the old way of doing things,

but he has come up with a brilliant
idea to hold the church together.

It's this cornice,

this huge beautiful marble cornice
with it's inscription to Justinian

and Theodora,

this isn't just here for decoration.

This links the church in a chain,
it binds the stones together a great

necklace for the church

brought from a shiny island in a
bright blue sea.

Throughout Justinian's long reign

the Marmara quarries were hard at
work,

shipping stone for a new crop of
imperial churches.

This was building on a grand scale,

churches for every country in the
empire.

But, the biggest of them all was a new
church for the imperial communion

at Constantinople.

For this, the quarry masters were
cutting larger and yet larger versions

of Anthemius' clever interlocking
cornice.

Here's a piece of one of those stone
chains under construction, and

here's its secret.

Each block was held to the next block
by a great iron bracket held in

lead that ran between the two stones.

Anthemius' engineers used rather a
lot of iron in their buildings.

It's part of whole new series of
techniques

that allowed them to think more
daringly, more bravely than any

other architects had done before.

Above all, it enabled Justinian,
himself, to have the ambition to

conceive of the greatest dome the
world has ever seen.

Such mysterious cargoes,

such magic marbles from across
the empire,

now sail the seas and came to the
Holy City of Byzantium

to be gathered up upon the site of
the imperial communion.

This is the finished dream,

intense climax of all of ancient
engineering,

a lively frame built with prayer and
pragmatism

to hold the largest dome the world
had ever seen.

This though was just the outside of
the sacred theater.

Inside, a forest of columns rises up
in ecstasy.

The walls, glass and gold and marble,

light and dark,

insubstantial and illusory seem to
simply fade away.

A perfect sea of space,

for God's holy wisdom to come down
and touch the earth,

a perfect theater for the anthems of
Byzantium.

Lo, the Lords of the heaven and earth
have come.

Blood red columns of Egyptian palfrey

were taken so it was said from the
Temple of the Sun at Rome.

The church's wooden doors from
Noah's Ark.

The building's bronze was stripped
from the Temple of the Goddess, Artemis,

one of the seven wonders of the pagan
world.

No wonder, the building has itself
become a legend.

Poets said the church can bind the
size of sunset and the scale of quarries,

the hues of birds and fish and
precious stones,

all the textures and experience of
that ancient everyday,

the leading pink of baby's
fingernails,

the rising of the bright red star,
Arcturus.

In Byzantine, in Greek, this church
was called the Church of Aya Sofia,

The Church of Holy Wisdom.

All of Justinian's enormous empire,

its wealth, its piety, its pagan
heritage was gathered up inside it.

Throughout the next nine centuries,

this vast old building stood right at
the center of Byzantium,

a symbol of its true destiny on earth.

And on the last day of Byzantium

the emperor and this troops came
here to pray

before they walked out of the city
walls to die.

For these were the vaults that held
the dream.

The dream that was Byzantium.