Under the city streets

We went to the Basilica Cistern the other day. It was build in AD 532, it is 65m wide and 143m long, the roof is supported by 336 columns arranged in 12 rows. During Byzantium times it was used to store water for the Great Palace. However, eventually it was closed and people for the most part seemed to forget about it until 1545, when a researcher learned that people were mysteriously able to pull water from holes in their basement floors and even catch fish that way. History states that even though it had been rediscovered, the Ottomans did not resurrect the Cistern, instead they used it as a dumping grounds for everything from household trash to corpses!

Their are still fish that swim in the waters of the Cistern, I think they are carp, some are actually quite big perhaps 8 inches wide and 18 inches long. As we walked through the Cistern water would drip from the darkness of the ceiling, while the shadows of the fish moved silently through the water below. And although I looked closely, I could not see any remains of the human remains left in the Cistern.

Another reason we thought it was cool to be in the Cistern was that the James Bond movie From Russia With Love has a scene that was filmed in the Cistern! Here a a few picture we took although they do not do it justice.

When they built the Cistern, they scavenged parts from other buildings that were no longer in use. Here are some picture of what we saw, including some of the more decorative parts they used (I think the Medusa heads are really cool!).