We have seen that to Nicetas, who knew and loved it in its best days, it was a model of celestial beauty, a glimpse of heaven itself.  To the more sober English observer, “its mosaic of marble slabs of various patterns and beautiful colors, the domes, roofs, and curved surfaces, with gold-grounded mosaic relieved by figures or architectural devices,” are “wonderfully grand and pleasing.”  All that St. Mark’s is to Venice, Hagia Sophia was to Constantinople.  But St. Mark’s, though enriched with some of the spoils of its great original, is, as to its interior at least, a feeble copy.  Hagia Sophia justified its founder in declaring, “I have surpassed thee, O Solomon!” and during seven centuries after Justinian his successors had each attempted to add to its wealth and its decoration.  Yet this, incomparably the most beautiful church in Christendom, at the opening of the thirteenth century was stripped and plundered of every ornament which could be carried away.  It appeared to the indignant Greeks that the very stones would be torn from the walls by these intruders, to whom nothing was sacred.

Around the Great Church were other objects which could be readily converted into bronze, and the destruction of which was irreparable.  The immense hippodrome was crowded with statues.  Egypt had furnished an obelisk for the centre, Delphi had given its commemoratory bronze of the victory of Plataea.  Later works of pagan sculptors were there in abundance, while Christian artists had continued the traditions of their ancestors.  The cultured inhabitants of Constantinople appreciated these works of art and took care of them.  In giving a list of the more important of the objects which went to the melting-pot, Nicetas again and again urges that these works were destroyed by barbarians who were ignorant of their value.  Incapable of appreciating either their historical interest or the value with which the labor of the artist had endowed them, the crusaders knew only the value of the metals of which they were composed.

The emperors had been buried within the precincts of the Church of the Holy Apostles, the site of which was afterward chosen by Mahomet II for the erection of the mosque now called by his name.  Their tombs, beginning with that of Justinian, were ransacked in the search for treasure.  It was not until the palaces of the nobles, the churches, and the tombs had been plundered that the pious brigands turned their attention to the statues, A colossal figure of Juno, which had been brought from Samos, and which stood in the forum of Constantine, was sent to the melting-pot.  We may judge of its size from the fact that four oxen were required to transport its head to the palace.  The statue of Paris presenting to Venus the apple of discord followed.  The Anemodulion, or “Servant of the Winds,” was a lofty obelisk, whose sides were covered with bas-reliefs of great beauty, representing scenes of rural life, and allegories depicting the seasons, while the obelisk was surmounted by a female figure which turned with the wind, and so gave to the whole its name.  The bas-reliefs were stripped off and sent to the palace to be melted.