The omens before Constantinople fell

Chroniclers reported a dense fog and a fire-like light over Hagia Sophia in the days before the Turks took Constantinople on 29 May 1453. Later tradition adds a priest who vanished into a wall.

Constantinople fell to the Turks on 29 May 1453. Saudi Aramco World says Sultan Mehmet sent massive assaults against the walls from around 1:30 am. After four hours of hard fighting, the Genoese commander among the Byzantines' allies was wounded and the Kerkoporta gate gave way, or was possibly left open. By mid-morning the city belonged to the Turks. Wikipedia says Sultan Mehmed II entered the city and ordered Hagia Sophia converted into a mosque.

The omens come from reports of the days before. Saudi Aramco World describes a dense fog over the city, strange for late spring. Other chroniclers, it says, reported that observers from within the city and beyond its walls saw a light like blazing fire about Hagia Sophia's dome, though the building stayed unburned. Phrantzes, who was close to the emperor and wrote a major Byzantine account of the time, said the light stayed above the city through a whole night.

A later tradition adds more. Harper's Magazine retells the story that the priest conducting mass vanished into the wall as the Turks entered Hagia Sophia. The Turks came upon a gilded door set up on the wall, and their masons failed to open it.