Editing Hagia Sophia (section)

===Floor===
[[File:Hagia Sophia - Omphalion - Ayasofya - Αγία Σοφία - 47856233651.jpg|thumb|The [[Omphalion]], a marble section of the floor in Hagia Sophia, is the place where Byzantine emperors have been crowned. The stone floor of the Hagia Sophia dates from the 6th century.]]

The stone floor of Hagia Sophia dates from the 6th century. After the first collapse of the vault, the broken dome was left ''in situ'' on the original Justinianic floor and a new floor was laid above the rubble when the dome was rebuilt in 558.<ref name="Dark-2019b">{{Cite book |last1=Dark |first1=Ken R. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TU7lswEACAAJ |title=Hagia Sophia in Context: An Archaeological Re-examination of the Cathedral of Byzantine Constantinople |last2=Kostenec |first2=Jan |publisher=Oxbow Books |year=2019 |isbn=978-1-78925-030-5 |location=Oxford |pages=69–72 |language=en}}</ref> From the installation of this second Justinianic floor, the floor became part of the [[liturgy]], with significant locations and spaces demarcated in various ways using different-coloured stones and marbles.<ref name="Dark-2019b" />

The floor is predominantly made up of [[Proconnesian marble]], quarried on [[Proconnesus]] (Marmara Island) in the [[Propontis]] (Sea of Marmara). This was the main white marble used in the monuments of Constantinople. Other parts of the floor, like the Thessalian [[verd antique]] "marble", were quarried in [[Ancient Thessaly|Thessaly]] in [[Roman Greece]]. The Thessalian verd antique bands across the nave floor were often likened to rivers.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Majeska |first=George P. |date=1978 |title=Notes on the Archeology of St. Sophia at Constantinople: The Green Marble Bands on the Floor |journal=Dumbarton Oaks Papers |volume=32 |pages=299–308 |doi=10.2307/1291426 |jstor=1291426 |issn=0070-7546}}</ref>

The floor was praised by numerous authors and repeatedly compared to a sea.<ref name="Barry-2007" /> The Justinianic poet [[Paul the Silentiary]] likened the ambo and the solea connecting it to the sanctuary with an island in a sea, with the sanctuary itself a harbour.<ref name="Barry-2007" /> The 9th-century ''Narratio'' writes of it as "like the sea or the flowing waters of a river".<ref name="Barry-2007" /> [[Michael the Deacon]] in the 12th century also described the floor as a sea in which the ambo and other liturgical furniture stood as islands.<ref name="Barry-2007" /> During the 15th-century conquest of Constantinople, the Ottoman caliph Mehmed is said to have ascended to the dome and the galleries in order to admire the floor, which according to [[Tursun Beg]] resembled "a sea in a storm" or a "petrified sea".<ref name="Barry-2007" /> Other Ottoman-era authors also praised the floor; [[Tâcîzâde Cafer Çelebi]] compared it to waves of marble.<ref name="Barry-2007" /> The floor was hidden beneath a carpet on 22 July 2020.<ref name="BBC News-2020b" />