For most visitors, the most memorable sight of Constantinople was its cathedral of Hagia Sophia. Sheer size was part of it. The building was topped with an enormous dome thirty-two metres across and over fifty-five metres high... So vast was the space enclosed with no apparent means of support that the dome seemed almost to float in the air... From the forty small windows around the base of the dome, sunlight suffused the building from different angles at different hours of the day, shining in from the upper windows and illuminating the gold mosaics and marble columns with dazzling light. Book jacket.