OL EuroEast I Conference, May 2004
Churches of Constantinople
At the conclusion of the Orientale Lumen EuroEast I Conference, participants visited several churches of the ancient city of Constantinople. Some still function while others are now museums.
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- Inside the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the “iron” church, the group was amazed at how everything was made from metal so that the building could be pre-fabricated in Austria and erected in 24 hours, a requirement by the civil authorities at the time it was built
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- The central interior dome of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), the Great Church of Christ, which functions as a museum today
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- Archimandrite Robert Taft, foremost scholar on Byzantine Liturgy, gave a short explanation of how liturgy was celebrated in the ancient church