The building was in a pitiful condition. The principal dome and the dome of the diaconicon had fallen in; the walls and vaults were cracked in many places and black with smoke; wind, and rain, and snow had long had free course to do what mischief they pleased. Happily there still remained too much beauty to be ignored, and the Government was persuaded to take the work of restoration in hand. The building now takes rank with the most interesting sights of the capital, presenting one of the finest embodiments of the ideal which inspired Byzantine art. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXV. S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. THE INTERIOR, LOOKING NORTH-WEST.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. THE OUTER NARTHEX, LOOKING SOUTH. _To face page 304._] _Architectural Features_ As the history of the church prepares us to expect, the building presents a very irregular plan. The central area is a short-armed Greek cross surmounted by a dome, and terminating to the east in a large apse flanked by side chapels now disconnected from it. To the west are two narthexes, on the south a parecclesion, and on the north a gallery in two stories. [Illustration: FIG. 99.] As the central part of the church is the oldest and of the greatest interest, the description will begin with the interior, and deal afterwards with the later exterior accretions. Only two doors lead from the inner narthex to the church, one of them in the centre of the axis and the other to the north. The absence of the corresponding and customary third door, for which there is space on the south side, should be noticed, as it throws light on the original plan of the building. The doors are beautifully treated with marble mouldings and panelled ingoes; the door to the north recalls the sculptured door in the south gallery of S. Sophia, but, unfortunately, the carved work of the panels has been destroyed. Above the central door, on the interior, is a porphyry cornice carved with peacocks drinking at fountains (Plate LXXXVII.). Large portions of the beautiful marble revetment on the walls of the church happily remain intact, and nowhere else in Constantinople, except in S. Sophia, can this splendid method of colour decoration be studied to greater advantage. Slabs of various marbles have been split and placed on the walls so as to form patterns in the veining. The lower part is designed as a dado in Proconessian striped marble, with upright posts of dark red at the angles and at intervals on the longer stretches of wall, and rests on a moulded marble base. Above the dado are two bands, red and green, separated from the dado and from each other by white fillets. The upper part is filled in with large panels, especially fine slabs of brown, green, or purple having been selected to form the centre panels. The plainer slabs of the side panels are framed in red or green borders, and outlined with fillets of white marble either plain or carved with the