Saturday, February 28, 2015

The Basilica Cistern

Spooky place, this Cistern (my photo)
There are two more places I visited during my whirlwind trip to Istanbul, the Basilica Cistern and Hagia Sophia. Today I'll tell you of the cistern, which I've learned quite a bit more about since I got home. What you are looking at are several of the 336 marble columns that support the ceiling of the cistern. There is still water (and fish!) in there, but it's only a few feet deep instead of the enormous amount that it could hold. Built in the 6th Century by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, it was originally located underneath the Stoa Basilica, which was reputed to be a beautiful place with gardens and colonnades that faced the Hagia Sophia. It provided a water filtration system to the Great Palace in Constantinople and afterwards to Topkapi Palace. According to that link,
The Basilica Cistern's water came from the Eğrikapı Water Distribution Center in the Belgrade Forest, which lie 19 km (12 mi) north of the city. It traveled through the 971 metres (3,186 ft)-long Valens (Bozdoğan) Aqueduct, and the 115.45 metres (378.8 ft)-long Mağlova Aqueduct, which was built by the Emperor Justinian.
When you enter the cistern, you go down 52 stone steps, and it's very dark and dank, with water dripping off the ceiling. There are walkways that have been constructed around the places one might wish to see, which are some of the more amazing columns. Also according to that link,
The majority of the columns in the cistern appear to have been recycled from the ruins of older buildings (a process called 'spoliation'), likely brought to Constantinople from various parts of the empire, together with those that were used in the construction of Hagia Sophia. They are carved and engraved out of various types of marble and granite.
And over in a far corner of the cistern, there are two columns with the image of Medusa on them. The first one, shown here, is sideways, with speculation that it's to blunt the power of her gaze. (But nobody knows for sure.)
The first Medusa column base
 Nobody knows where they came from originally, but probably from some ancient Roman artifact. The sparkly stuff in the water is from coins that people have thrown into the water. The second Medusa head is completely inverted.
The second Medusa head
Now the first one might have been placed sideways to make it fit the column, but this one would have been the same in either direction, so I'm thinking it was to negate her power. But we will never know for sure. I found some other very interesting information about the cistern on The Lonely Planet website:
Forgotten by the city authorities some time before the Conquest, it wasn't rediscovered until 1545, when scholar Petrus Gyllius was researching Byzantine antiquities in the city and was told by local residents that they were able to miraculously obtain water by lowering buckets into a dark space below their basement floors. Some were even catching fish this way. Intrigued, Gyllius explored the neighbourhood and finally accessed the cistern through one of the basements.
And it only became a tourist attraction in Istanbul in September 1987, the renovation of which was spearheaded by the Istanbul Metropolitan Museum. They cleaned it up and replaced boats with the walkways inside and now clean up in a different way by extracting 20 Turkish lira from each tourist.

It's definitely a place I'm glad to have seen, and the links I've provided will give you the whole history of the cistern. Don't miss it if you travel to Istanbul.
:-)

21 comments:

  1. I walked through the mysteriously beautiful cistern too. Thanks for taking us along on this minitour in your post.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The smaller portion raved about the cistern -and the Hagia Sophia. And your photo is very like some of his.
    I am glad you are home safely - and that you found things to interest and delight you.

    ReplyDelete
  3. dark, dank and rather spooky! throw in some medusa stares and you've got the stuff of legends. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Did you know that it was the location for for the filming of one of the early Bond films?

    ReplyDelete
  5. It must have been so fascinating to be there! That first photo is incredible. I can imagine it felt a little eerie!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wow so very interesting! Amazing they had that kind of engineering back in those days, to bring water into the city and store it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. First.. incredibly interesting. What an amazing piece of history holed up underground. Secondly, considering the dim light, your photos are fantastic and show incredible detail. I can't wait to see more from your trip.

    ReplyDelete
  8. It's quite amazing that infrastructure like this was built and then went into disuse and disappeared. It's quite a story.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I knew I had read about this somewhere. It was Dan Brown's book Inferno.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I wonder if I could navigate those steps wearing a long muumuu.

    ReplyDelete
  11. It vaguely remember a movie scene taking place here. At least something seems familiar. This is fascinating information.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Beautiful. I was Istanbul in earlier days and this was not accessible for tourists

    ReplyDelete
  13. What a strange but fascinating place. :)

    ReplyDelete
  14. Really...I would have been freaked out lowering a bucket into my basement and coming up with a fish...I would have looked around a bit and then moved:)

    ReplyDelete
  15. What clever engineering to preserve water. We had cisterns in Key West, though nothing so elaborate.

    ReplyDelete
  16. This is such a great post, DJan! I remember the cistern well. :- )

    Although we were part of a tour, we went to see the cistern on our free day and it was well worth it. Thank you for bringing the memories back along with your fabulous photos.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Wow! This is all fascinating stuff, D-Jan. Thanks for posting!

    ReplyDelete
  18. Thanks for sharing this portion of your trip. I love to vicariously travel with others. And to learn of things I never imagined.

    ReplyDelete
  19. that is really cool...i wonder if there is significance to the 52 steps...is it the number of weeks in a year...and i wonder if the 336 was ties to days originally....the faces are cool too...

    ReplyDelete
  20. Dear DJan, thanks so much for giving us this historical background on a site I've never before heard of. The world and all its natural beauty and its human-made artifacts is a wonder! Peace.

    ReplyDelete
  21. I'm always amazed at the abilities of civilizations of the past. Carvings in stone are always so artistic and the methods of transporting water meant the people who came before us left a great legacy and had admirable expertise in many areas. Thanks for the info.

    ReplyDelete

I really appreciate your comments! If you see a word verification box here, just ignore it. I don't use the darn thing and Blogger is trying to get us to use it, I guess. Ignore it and your comment will still appear.