Saint Sophia stood near the sacred palace in Istanbul and was beautifully rebuilt. Using immense pendentives - curved triangles that convert the rectangle to the hemisphere - its architects created one of the largest spaces in the world to be covered by a single roof. This rebuilding was tremendously costly to the city, forcing schools to close,with teachers dying of starvation. In fact, one estimate says that five years of tax revenue from Egypt was spent just on the pulpit. Today, very little remains of the glory which could once be found here.
The great age of Ottoman architecture came to an end, and its decay is mirrored in the last great imperial mosque to be founded in the capital, the Blue Mosque.
