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.
:-)