The Hagia Sophia was the centerpiece of a singular campaign of urban renewal driven through with the same energy and speed that had characterized the emperor’s changes to Roman law. And the renovation of Constantinople was in turn only one part of an empire-wide monumental building program, which included marvels such as four giant pillars at Ephesus topped with statues of the evangelists, and a city founded in what is now Serbia to commemorate the place of the emperor’s birth and provide a palatial home for a new archbishopric of “Justiniana Prima.”
