(Istanbul)
(Istanbul)
(Istanbul)
Our first stop was far more interesting than it looked. This large, old, pillar was the mile marker for the Roman Empire. All the roads began being measured from this point making this the center of the Roman Empire at one point.
"The Milion, was a mile-marker monument erected in the early 4th century AD in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey). It was the starting-place for measurement of distances for all the roads leading to the cities of the Byzantine Empire and had the same function as the Milliarium Aureum of Rome. The domed building of the Milion rested on 4 large arches, and it was expanded and decorated with several statues and paintings. It had survived intact, following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (1453), for about the next 50 years, but disappeared at the start of the 16th century. During excavations in the 1960s, some partial fragments of it were discovered under houses in the area."
(Mile Marker)
(Mile Marker)
(Mile Marker)
(Mile Marker)
After realizing that it was prayer time at the Blue Mosque and not wanting to wait in line for Hagia Sophia we went to the hippodrome. The hippodrome was the area where during the Roman Empire they would have chariot races and other events. There used to be a lot of monuments in the middle of the track but now only three are left. The two large pillars marked the ends and the green thing in the middle used to be a snake. Muslims regard the snake as evil so they took off it's head and left the green spiraling bodies.
"The Hippodrome of Constantinople was a circus that was the sporting and social centre of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. Today it is a square named Sultanahmet Meydanı (Sultan Ahmet Square) in the Turkish city of Istanbul, with a few fragments of the original structure surviving. It is sometimes also called Atmeydanı (Horse Square) in Turkish."
(Hippodrome)
(Hippodrome)
(Hippodrome)
(Hippodrome)
The next place we went was my favorite place in Istanbul. It was the Basilica Cistern. What I gathered from the minimal amount of information we had was that this used to be a place to store water during...I'm not really sure when. It is about the size of a football field, or at least the part we could see since some parts were not well lit. The water was stored here and then moved to the other parts of the city where it was needed.
"Known in Byzantium as the Basilica Cistern because it lay underneath the Stoa Basilica, one of the great squares on the first hill, it was used to store water for the Great Palace and surrounding buildings. Eventually closed, it seemed to have been forgotten by the city authorities sometime before the Conquest. Enter scholar Petrus Gyllius, who was researching Byzantine antiquities in 1545 and was told by locals that they could obtain water by lowering buckets in their basement floors. Some were even catching fish this way. Intrigued, Gyllius explored the neighbourhood and discovered a house through whose basement he accessed the cistern. Even after his discovery, the Ottomans (who referred to the cistern as Yerebatan Sarayı) didn't treat the underground palace with the respect it deserved and it became a dumping ground for all sorts of junk, as well as corpses. It has been restored at least three times. The cistern is 65m wide and 143m long, and its roof is supported by 336 columns arranged in 12 rows. It once held 80,000 cubic metres of water, pumped and delivered through nearly 20km of aqueducts."
(Basilica Cistern)
(Basilica Cistern)
(Basilica Cistern)
(Basilica Cistern)
(Basilica Cistern)
(Basilica Cistern)
(Basilica Cistern)
(Basilica Cistern)
(Basilica Cistern)
(Basilica Cistern)
(Basilica Cistern)
(Basilica Cistern)
(Basilica Cistern)
(Basilica Cistern)
(Basilica Cistern)
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