[1648] Recurring Spontaneous Earthquakes Followed by Deliberate Recovery
The damage left from the recurring earthquakes was spontaneously created yet the deliberate human response to this damage shows how the site is a lieu de mémoire.
Constantinople is a city that is built along a fault line and was ravaged by repeated earthquakes in 1509, 1648, 1719, 1766, and 1894 (3).
This is the part of the Little Hagia Sophia's history that most poignantly shows why it is a lieu de mémoire. The earthquakes that occurred were beyond human control – truly spontaneous – and thus cannot be considered a lieu de mémoire themselves. However, the human response to these earthquakes was truly deliberate, neither an accident (like the damages of the earthquake were) nor the by-product of a greater process. Instead, the deliberate recovery after each earthquake shows humans trying to recreate the past: “moments of history torn away from the movement of history, then returned” (Nora 12). There is an attempt to take a particular moment of history (the state of the building at a certain time) and fight the movement of history (the earthquake) by restoring the building to its prior state. Because the site is a lieu de mémoire, it is possible “to stop time, to block the work of forgetting, to establish a state of things” (Nora 19).
Moreover, there is a bridging of intentional commemorative-value with age-value. The intentional commemorative-value is shown through the desire to remember the past, whereas the age-value comes through in the literal layers of rebuilding (1, 2). Age-value is the idea of carrying the imprint of time: the repaired building bears a foundation and base layer that come from the original structure while there are new layers on top from the restoration and repairs.