chora

So today I wandered farther afield, all the way to the old city walls of Constantinople, to go to a church with some fantastic, but occasionally puzzling, mosaics. It was hard to take pictures, because there was a gang of vigilante children which would run up, giggling, and yelling "no flash!" Now, of course, I almost never take pictures with a flash when I can avoid it, and since mosaics are very slow moving, I wouldn't even *want* to use the flash, even if it didn't contribute to their disintegration. I'm not sure whether the children thought that "no flash" meant "no pictures," since the signs had crossed out images of cameras (with very small flashes attached), or whether they were just playing a game, but it meant that to take a picture I had to walk quickly around the church to lose them, and then quickly set the camera up somewhere to take a shot. Still, I managed to get a couple.

Joseph coming to get Mary from the priest. Why is she half the height of everyone else?



Mary with Jesus in her holy womb (they even turned the word mother into a nomen sacrum - that's the MP with a line over it to her left):


You'll have to enlarge this picture of the Temptations of Christ in order to see the devil; he's the little black minx.