church of the Holy Wisdom was in the city's oldest part, that of the Holy Apostles stood in the newer part of the expanded imperial capital, on the great thoroughfare called Mese Odós (), and became the city's busiest church. Most emperors and many patriarchs and bishops were buried here, and their relics were venerated by the faithful for centuries. The church's most treasured possessions were the skulls of Saints Andrew, Luke and Timothy, but the church also held what was believed to be part of the "Column of Flagellation", to which Jesus had been bound and flogged. Its treasury also held relics of Saint John Chrysostom and other Church Fathers, saints and martyrs. Over the years the church acquired huge amounts of gold, silver and gems donated by the faithful. Emperor Basil I renovated and probably enlarged the church, and in 874 the remains of the historian and patriarch Nikephoros I of Constantinople, who had died earlier in the century, were reinterred in the rebuilt church, where they became the site of annual imperial devotion. In the 10th century Constantine of Rhodes composed a Description of the Building of the Apostles in verse, which he dedicated to Constantine VII. The basilica was looted during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The historian Nicetas Choniates records that the Crusaders plundered the imperial tombs for their gold and gems. Not even Justinian's tomb was spared. The tomb of Emperor Heraclius was opened and his golden crown was stolen with the late emperor's hair still attached to it. Some of these treasures were taken to Venice, where they can be seen in St Mark's Basilica, while the body of St. Gregory was brought to Rome. When Michael VIII Palaeologus recaptured the city from the Crusaders, he erected a statue of the Archangel Michael at the church to commemorate the event and his part in it. The church was partially restored again by Andronicus II Palaeologus in the early 14th century, but thereafter fell into disrepair as the Empire declined and Constantinople's population fell. The Florentine Cristoforo Buondelmonti saw the decaying church in 1420. In 1453 Constantinople fell to the Ottomans. The cathedral church of Hagia Sophia was seized and turned into a mosque, and Sultan Mehmed II reassigned to the Orthodox Patriarch Gennadius Scholarius the church of the Holy Apostles, which temporarily became the new administrative centre of the Ecumenical Orthodox Church. But