Byzantine Cistern

When I spoke to Recep back in May about my sightseeing plans for Istanbul, he mentioned that I must see the ancient Byzantine cistern. Beautiful, he said. So, as I was walking to his place this afternoon, I saw the entrance to the cistern with tour buses in front. I paid the 6 euros and took a long stairway down below the rest of the city.

Modern Istanbul is built on old Istanbul, which was built on old Constantinople, which was before even older Roman Byzantium. Layers and layers of history. On a side note, I heard that a new subway line is being built. It has run into delays, however, because the subway stop closest to the tourist district turned out to be a major Byzantine archeological site. Apparently they found a full Byzantine ship.

The cistern that I saw was vast. The major attraction to the site is the organized rows and rows of columns that support the roof of the cistern, which is in turn supporting the buildings on top. The cistern itself was built during the major renovations to Constantinople done by Justinian and Theodora in the 500s AD. Obviously they had recycled columns that were associated with other sites. The columns were a hodgepodge of different styles. Two of the hundreds of columns had bases with Medusa heads.

Seeing the cistern was like visiting a Roman temple dedicated to water storage.

In a completely non-Istanbul fact, I grew up in Sarasota at a house that had a vast underground cistern. The cistern actually was featured in an article last year in the Sarasota Herald Tribune. I would hesitate sending tourists to see it though. The snakes found in the Whelan cistern may not limited to those carved into Medusa-headed column bases.

I found out later that the Ottoman Historical Archives, which is located directly across the street from the Cok house and carpet store, will be razed soon because the weight is too much for the cistern columns underneath to support.