by Jon Lackman | 3 December 2008 | Architecture, Conservation
Smithsonian Magazine writes about current attempts to restore and safeguard Hagia Sophia:
“For months at a time, you don’t see anybody working,” said [Zeynep] Ahunbay, a professor of architecture at Istanbul Technical University. She had directed a partial restoration of the building’s exterior in the late 1990s and is regarded by conservators as its guardian angel. “One year there is a budget, the next year there is none,” she said with a sigh. “We need a permanent restoration staff, conservators for the mosaics, frescoes and masonry, and we need to have them continuously at work” …
Astonishingly—although many scholars have studied Hagia Sophia over the years—the building has never been completely documented. New discoveries may yet be made. In the 1990s, during emergency repairs on the dome, workers uncovered graffiti that had been scrawled by tenth-century repairmen, imploring God for protection as they worked from scaffolds 150 feet above the floor. “Kyrie, voithi to sou doulo, Gregorio,” ran a typical one—”Lord, help your servant, Gregorius.” Says [UPenn architectural historian Robert] Ousterhout, “You can imagine how scared they might have been up there.”
