The Sunken Palace

Istanbul is often described as mystical, but when you go down the steps into the cool, dark cisterns, it doesn’t get more mystical and magical than that. Beneath Istanbul lie hundreds of gloomy cisterns. They're left from the days when Istanbul was Constantinople.

The grandest of all is Yerebatan Saray Sarniçi, called the Basilica Cistern, or “Sunken Palace”, because of its size (2.4 acres), its capacity (over 21 million US gallons) and its 336 marble columns. You can walk through the cistern on a wooden walkway to the sounds of soft classical music and dripping water. And if you look closely, there are goldfish darting around in the water below.

It was constructed in the mid-500's A.D. during the reign of Justinian I in order to supply water to palaces located nearby. The water was brought in from far away water sources via aqueduct, and then stored in cisterns such as this one. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the cistern fell largely unused for centuries. During the 1980's a huge restoration project was conducted on the cistern to allow for tourist visits.

Justinian’s builders didn’t actually carve all these intricate decorate columns; this was a case of ancient recycling. They reused materials from old buildings. And one of the most famous sights within the cistern is the pedestal with the two Medusa heads carved into it. The exact origin of the two heads is unknown, though they were probably recycled from the late Roman period. Another mystery is why one of the heads is upside down, while the other is tilted to one side.In Greek mythology, Medusa was a gorgeous gal with a great head of hair, but Athena, queen of the gods, was jealous. She turned her into a monster with serpents growing out of her head, and anyone who looked at her turned into stone.


Another tidbit of interest: We were told that the scene in the old James Bond movie From Russia With Love was filmed in Yerbatan. It is the scene when Bond is rowing in a small boat through a forest of marble columns. Cool, huh?