Of the Buildings of Justinian (De aedificiis) is the sixth-century historian Procopius’s account of the vast building program of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. It catalogues the churches, fortifications, aqueducts, bridges, and public works raised across the empire, most famously the great church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, whose dome Procopius describes with awe.
Written as a panegyric, the work celebrates imperial magnificence and piety, and its lavish praise must be weighed against its rhetorical purpose. Even so, it is an indispensable primary source for the architecture and engineering of the age of Justinian, recording structures since lost or transformed. For students of Byzantine and late-antique building, Procopius offers a near-contemporary witness to one of history’s greatest eras of construction.