Hagia Sophia’s quake history meets urgent restoration scaffolds

Hagia Sophia has survived major earthquakes for centuries—from a full collapse of its cupola in 558 to partial collapses later—while today scaffolding and engineering work tackle the structural risks and restore vulnerable details like the dome, floors, column

The first thing you learn about Hagia Sophia is that it refuses to stay still—not only in the city it defines, but in the ground beneath it.

Istanbul. home to a cathedral that has already lived multiple lives—religious building. mosque. museum. and then mosque again—sits close to fault lines that make earthquakes a constant threat. And for a structure celebrated worldwide, that threat is not abstract. It shows up in engineering decisions. in the act of reinforcing. and in the scaffolding now climbing around it as workers prepare it for “the inevitable” large quake and the even larger one that follows.

Hagia Sophia was first built in the fourth century. Since then, it has suffered severe earthquake damage more than once. The cupola collapsed completely in the year 558. Later, the tenth and fourteenth centuries brought partial collapses. What makes the building’s survival matter—what forces attention beyond beauty—is how much depends on the famous central dome and the smaller sub-domes that support it. Those elements are given their own focus in the new B1M video. which explains how Hagia Sophia’s design has been challenged and. repeatedly. kept standing.

Even the details people tend to remember as decoration turn out to be part of the structure’s story of endurance. Eight green marble columns support the upper floors. The video notes they are thought to have been recycled from the ruins of the Temple of Artemis. one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. And inside. there is red stone set into the floor on which emperors were once crowned. described as material brought in from the Egyptian desert.

That layered past—Roman, Greek, Christian, and Islamic—has never been just a matter of plaques or textbooks. Hagia Sophia is presented here as a built record of centuries, visible in what has been reused, rebuilt, and preserved. The presence of scaffolding while restoration is underway makes the tension plain: this is a monument that the city cannot afford to treat as untouchable.

Today’s restoration effort concentrates on the dome, but it does not stop there. Floors, columns, and mosaics are also part of the work. The goal is preservation of historical features that. in the present era. carry special urgency—features that may look permanent until you remember what happened in 558. or what came later in the tenth and fourteenth centuries.

There’s a careful chain linking the facts together: Istanbul’s seismic risk frames why engineering keeps returning to Hagia Sophia; the building’s repeated earthquake damage—complete cupola collapse in 558 and partial collapses in the tenth and fourteenth centuries—explains why the dome and its supporting sub-domes matter so much; and the scaffolding now surrounding the site shows what “preparedness” looks like when history is still standing but not yet safe.

If restoration efforts proceed successfully, Hagia Sophia is expected to continue standing as one of Istanbul’s most striking structures—absorbing the history it has already carried, while remaining in the urban and geographical drama of the city for another millennium and a half.

Hagia Sophia Istanbul earthquakes seismic retrofitting dome cupola collapse mosaics restoration Byzantine architecture Islamic heritage Roman columns