SULTAN AHMET MOSQUE (THE BLUE MOSQUE)

Sultanahmet - Istanbul - Turkey

GPS : 41°00'20.0"N 28°58'36.0"E / 41.005556, 28.976667



PHOTOGRAPHS ALBUM - 1

PHOTOGRAPHS ALBUM - 2

Work on the Complex of Ahmed I (1603-1617) began in August 1609 (1108 AH). The southern part of the ancient Hippodrome or Atmeydani (today's Sultanahmet Square) was cleared of residential palaces belonging to members of the aristocracy and a large portion of the Byzantine sphendone (the semi-circular end of the hippodrome) was taken down to make space for the mosque. Construction on the mosque finished in 1617 just before the sultan's death and work on the complex (külliye) continued for three years under his sons Mustafa I (1617-1618) and Osman II (1618-1622), who also built a mausoleum for their father and predecessor.

For a variety of reasons including the terrain of the site, master architect Sedefkar Mehmet Aga organized the complex's buildings in functional groups in the vicinity of the mosque rather than arrange them symmetrically around the mosque as was done in its precedents at Fatih and Süleymaniye.

The complex is composed of a mosque, royal pavilion (hünkar kasri), mausoleum (türbe), madrasa (medrese), school for koran readers (dar'ül kurra), Koranic school for boys (mekteb), hospice (tabhane), hospital (darüssifa), soup kitchen (imaret), an open air market street (arasta), rental rooms (kira odalari) and mansions (konak), cisterns (mahzen) and public fountains (sebil). The complex buildings conform to the orientation of the mosque, 39 degrees east of south.

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Blue Mosque) is the only one which has 6 minarets among mosques in Istanbul. The four minarets with three sherefes each (minaret balcony) were erected at the four corners of the mosque, and the remaining two short minarets with two sherefes each were erected opposite at two corners of the courtyard. The central dome, placed on four piers, is 33.6 meters in diameter and 43 meters high at its central point.  It is supported by four semi-domes. The ceiling structure of the Blue mosque is similar to the Şehzadebaşı (Prince) Mosque.

The interior of the mosque, which is 64 x 72 m, is lighted with 260 windows. The outer courtyard, encircled with windowed walls, has eight doors on both sides and in front. The inner courtyard with marble floor coverings is enclosed with 30 domes. The tulip and carnations motifs of the fountain with six columns in the inner courtyard is eye-catching. It is entered by the inner court with three doors.

Those three doors and the main door of the outer court are made of bronze.  On the pulpit of the mosque with nacre-inlay, the embroidered muezzin mahfil (a gallery/platform for the call to prayer) and the niche were worked with the architectural details. In addition, it has artistic value with carpets, kilims, rahles (reading desks), engravings, and colourful stained-glass windows.

The Sultanahmet Mosque has the unusual feature of having six minarets, four of which rise from the corners mosque and two lower minarets placed at the front corners of the courtyard. The four around the mosque have three balconies each, while the courtyard minarets are furnished with two. All six minarets have fluted shafts and balconies with stalactite corbels. The northeastern minaret was restored in 1955.

The mosque, named after its donor Sultan Ahmed I, has been donned the name "Blue" by foreign travelers based on the Kütahya tiles in dominant tones of blue, turquoise and green that cover most of its interior. The interior galleries have displays of tiles composed in panels at the balcony level depicting gardens with cypresses, flowers and fruit trees, but the most precious tiles have been used to decorate the royal lodge, which has notable jade and gilt work in its marble mihrab niche.

Similar motifs, painted in gold and corresponding colors, adorn the multiple convex facets of the elephant feet above their marble bases, two of which are furnished with fountains. This rich polychrome complexion of the interior comes alive with sublime light flooding the interior from three tiers of windows on the walls and numerous others pierced into the domes: The central dome has twenty-eight windows in its drum and each of the four semi-domes has fourteen. Colored glasses on windows were originally imported from Venice, but have since been replaced with modern substitutes.

The preacher's pulpit, doors and window shutters display mastery of woodcarving and mother of pearl inlay of the period. The mosque holds many treasures, such as Quranic tablets from the hand of the renowned Ameti Kasim Gubari, while many others have been lost or placed in museums. The interior has been renovated several times, as early as 1837, and also more recently.

The walled mosque precinct, enclosing the mosque and the royal pavilion, occupies the peak of a hill alongside the Atmeydani to the northwest. Terraces descend down to the Bosphorus on the southeast side of the precinct wall. In 1912, a fire leveled the Ishakpasa (today's Küçükayasofya) neighborhood down the hill from the mosque, allowing archaeologists to reveal the remains of the Great Palace of Emperors (Büyük Saray) that was inhabited between the 4th and the 12th centuries. The mosque and market streets that run along its precinct wall to the southeast were built over the undercrofts of this palace.

Further excavations in the market street and vicinity in 1935-1938, 1951-1954 and from 1983 to our day have unearthed 6th century palace floor mosaics that are on display at the Great Palace Mosaic Museum that occupies part of the rebuilt market street. Nothing remains of the rental rooms that were located above the stores here and others that were distributed among the buildings of the complex. The hamam of the market street, located at its southwest end, remains in disrepair.

On the north corner of the precinct, the madrasa (school for Koran readers) and the mausoleum form an enclosed cluster. These buildings were built on the cisterns of the 4th century Byzantine Sphendone, which was already in disuse by the early 13th century. The soup kitchen, hospital, and hospice form a second cluster that was built on top of the sphendone after the Hippodrome was filled with earth from the mosque's excavation. Only sections of the soup kitchen remain at this location today where an industrial school complex (mekteb-i sanayi) was built in the 19th century.

The qibla wall of the Sultan Ahmed I mosque doubles as a retaining wall to the southeast where there is a partial basement (mahzen) under the walled qibla garden; it is first in a series of terraces that were built downhill from the mosque. From here, two gated passages lead down to the level of rental housing that sits above market stores, culminating at portals on the market street and Tavukhane Street. An intermediate layer contains seven more rental rooms and a public fountain. The qibla wall has been differentiated in its design from the other walls to accommodate its special function.

Where the peripheral extensions on three sides are covered with three semi-domes, the qibla recess is composed with two semi-domes on the sides, joining a straight wall in between, where the tall marble frame of the mihrab niche is positioned at the center. The piers supporting the structure, which project freely into the mosque interior on three sides, have been restrained along the qibla wall, resulting in a flatter but more subtly varied surface. A slender marble minbar rises along the pilaster to the right of the mihrab, and is crowned with a golden crescent above its conical cap.

The arasta or market street of Sultanahmet was to provide income for the mosque and its dependencies. It is the only example of its kind to have remained from the 17th century. It is composed of two facing rows of stores running northeast and southwest, with over thirty stores in each row. There is a portal at the northeast end through which a passage leads up to the qibla garden of the mosque, and a single row of nine stores beyond it that used to be double-story rental rooms. An additional five stores are located around the corner at the southwest end on Tavukhane Street, where the market baths (arasta hamami) are located.

There are two adjacent portals here, one of which may have belonged to a rental mansion; the other marks the location of the vaulted passage that leads up to the qibla garden. Since the market street was destroyed by fire in 1912 the area had been haphazardly rebuilt on multiple occasions up until the 1980s at which point the General Directorate of Foundations (Vakiflar Genel Müdürlügü) carried out a historical reconstruction of the stores. Traces of the domed rental rooms above stores were judged inadequate guides to a reconstruction, but were maintained as archaeological evidence. The Mosaic Museum, established in 1953 and re-opened as the Great Palace Mosaic Museum in 1997, occupies 16 rooms of the market street.

The madrasa, mausoleum and a funerary garden are accessed from a private lane that is entered from the mosque precinct. They are isolated from the outside by walls that closely follow the outline of the two buildings. The mausoleum, located on the north side of the lane, is a large square building set in a garden and entered from a three-bay domed portico to the northeast.

Elevated from the surrounding grounds, the mosque courtyard is entered through three portals with cascading steps. The main entrance is to the northwest in axis with the central gate on Sultanahmet Square. It is deep and has a stalactite semi-dome. Inside, a domed arcade frames the court on three sides and the mosque portico - with arches slightly wider and taller than those of the arcade - completes the gallery on the fourth side. The two side entrances are found on either end of the domed portico. At the center of the courtyard, in axis with the main entrance, is a hexagonal fountain. It is crowned by a pent roof raised on elaborately carved arches that spring from six marble columns; this roof has recently been replaced by a small dome.

The columns of the arcade and the portico are also carved from marble as well as porphyry, and the floor is paved with marble tiles. The courtyard has two rows of superimposed windows - rectangular below and arched above - that are placed at regular intervals on all three façades, which are topped with a marble balustrade. A double-story gallery runs along the court on the exterior, with ablution spigots provided at its basement level. This narrow gallery, which has a slanted roof at the level of the upper court windows, is continued at a grander scale and flanks the prayer hall on either side where it is roofed with domes and barrel vaults, interrupted only by the projecting piers.

The prayer hall's main entrance is from the courtyard and there are two secondary side entrances. The main entrance is highlighted by the raised central portico dome, which bears a marble Quranic panel on its tall drum. Set in a niche with a stalactite semi-dome, the entry has a triptych foundation plaque. The prayer hall is a rectangle, slightly wider than it is long. Inside, it is spacious and open, with a focus around the tall central dome. The dome sits on pendentives carried on four colossal piers or "elephant feet" that delineate the central court. Beyond the court, the space is extended by use of semi-domes and buttresses that transfer the lateral loads to piers set inside the walls.

The central dome is surrounded by four semi-domes below its drum, which are wrapped by smaller semi-domes - three on all sides except for the qibla wall. The semi-domes are braced with buttresses on either side that are articulated with hipped roofs and domed turrets. This structural arrangement provides for a spacious and open interior and creates an effect of cascading domes on the exterior. The composition ends at the four corners where small single domes complete the pyramidal succession.

The flow of space on the interior is uninterrupted except for a few functional elements. There is a muezzin's platform elevated on columns in front of the southern pier, which has geometric patterns carved in its marble balustrade. An elaborately decorated wooden pulpit is set adjacent to the opposite pier. The royal lodge (hünkar mahfili), a screened platform raised on arches carried on precious marble columns, is located behind this pier and occupies the bay underneath the eastern corner dome.

It is accessed from inside the mosque, as well as from the royal kiosk outside. An arcade, with balustrades at the balcony level, follows the entire length of the interior walls with the exception of the qibla wall. It is broken up into segments by the projecting structural piers and the supporting piers of the smaller semi-domes, which replace the arcade columns on their way down.

The small domed building behind the mausoleum is a dar'ül kurra, or a school for training Koran readers. It is built close to the mausoleum eyvan into which it opens with a large window. A room for the timekeeper of the mosque (muvakkithane) was added to the front of the mausoleum in the 18th or 19th century, replacing a sebil. There is a walled-in cemetery (hazire) between the dar'ül kurra and the mosque precinct. There were six adjoining stores on the Hippodrome side of the cemetery, which appear as two-story wooden buildings with domes in 19th century photographs.

The hospice (tabhane), soup kitchen (imaret), hospital (darüşşifa) were erected one behind the other over the sphendone (the semi-circular end of the hippodrome) to the southwest of the mosque. At this end, the hippodrome is a terrace supported by a deep circular wall of vaults and arches that retain the hill towards the Marmara Sea. The retaining wall has maintained its function and is still visible today.

The charity cluster of Sultan Ahmed I, however, was already in ruins by the time the School of Industry (Mekteb-i Sanayi) was erected at this location in 1866. Sections of the hospital, the soup kitchen and possibly a former Sword Factory (Kiliçhane) that had existed here in some form since Byzantine times, were incorporated into the campus. The buildings that occupy the site today are from 1894 and were built by Architect Raimondo D'Aronco after the original school collapsed in an earthquake.

Along with the School of Industry, three separate buildings originally housed the Janissary Museum (Yeniçeri Müzesi), the Ministry of Agriculture, Mining and Forestry (Ziraat, Maadin ve Orman Nezareti) and the School of Industry. The remains of the hospital and soup kitchen were restored and incorporated into the new development. Restored in 1977, the buildings are in use by the Registrar of Marmara University (Marmara Üniversitesi Rektörlüğü) and the Sultanahmet School of Industrial Arts (Sultanahmet Endüstri Meslek Lisesi).

Minarets
The Blue Mosque with all six minarets visibleThe Sultan Ahmed Mosque is one of the two mosques in Turkey that has six minarets, the other is in Adana. When the number of minarets was revealed, the Sultan was criticized for presumption, since this was, at the time, the same number as at the mosque of the Ka'aba in Mecca. He overcame this problem by paying for a seventh minaret at the Mecca mosque. Four minarets stand at the corners of the mosque. Each of these fluted, pencil-shaped minarets has three balconies (Şerefe) with stalactite corbels, while the two others at the end of the forecourt only have two balconies.

Until recently the muezzin or prayer-caller had to climb a narrow spiral staircase five times a day to announce the call to prayer. Today a public address system is used, and the call can be heard across the old part of the city, echoed by other mosques in the vicinity. Large crowds of both Turks and tourists gather at sunset in the park facing the mosque to hear the call to evening prayers, as the sun sets and the mosque is brilliantly illuminated by coloured floodlights.

Hünkar Kasrı
There is a royal kiosk (hünkar kasri) to the southeast of the mosque, which was rebuilt recently following destruction by fire. It features, for the first time in Ottoman architecture, the entry ramp, which allowed the sultan to enter the lodge mounted on his horse. The ramp leads up to a loggia with a view over the Bosphorus, with two retiring rooms on one side and a connection to the royal lodge inside the mosque on the other. Today, the royal kiosk is home to the Carpet and Kilim Museum (Hali ve Kilim Müzesi) that displays historic samples from mosques around Anatolia.

Madrasa (School)
The madrasa stands on the opposite side of the lane from the mausoleum and the walled-in cemetery. It is composed of twenty-four rooms around a rectangular arcaded courtyard with a fountain at the center. The main entrance, in axis with the fountain, is located at the center of the northwestern wing. Traces of columns around the fountain suggest that it may have been roofed. The madrasa rooms have windows opening to the courtyard and the exterior and are equipped with fireplaces (ocak) and shelving niches.

The main classroom (dersane) is atypically annexed at the northern corner of the cloister rather than on its longitudinal axis. Madrasa functions were discontinued with the education reform law (Tevhid-i Tedrisat Kanunu) in 1924. The building was restored in 1935 and the courtyard was covered with a glass roof to prepare for its new use as an archive for the Directorate of Public Affairs.

Hospital
The hospital of the Sultanahmet Complex is often identified as an insane asylum (timarhane) and was probably dedicated to that purpose. Located at the western end of its cluster closest to the circular retaining wall, the hospital consisted of rooms around an arcaded courtyard and adjoining baths (darüssifa hamami). Its rooms and portico had collapsed prior to the construction of the School of Industry but its external walls and main portal, which faced northeast, have been preserved. Certain columns and capitals belonging to its portico have been used at the entrance of the school building.

Kitchen
There are three separate structures of the soup kitchen that are identifiable upon entering the School of Industrial Arts from Sokollu Mehmet Pasa Highway. The kitchens (matbah or mutfak) have been preserved entirely whereas the bakery (firin) and the cellar (kiler) have been modified. The kitchens were entered from northeast and southwest and had a vaulted storage room and a chimney. Their twin domes had ventilation slits along the drum and oculi with glass lantern for further aeration.

The bakery, which opens to the southwest towards the kitchen, is a square building with four domes. Its ovens have been enclosed and only one of its chimneys remains. The cellar is the largest structure in the soup kitchen and is located to the west towards the hospital. There is no trace of the dining hall (mekel or yemekhane).

The Koranic school and other buildings
The Koranic school, a single room raised on a vaulted basement, is attached to the northeast wall of the outer courtyard next to a gate. It has a fireplace, shelving niches and a small toilet. It has a flat roof but may have been covered with a dome prior to rebuilding after the 1912 fire. The northeast façade has some of the original stone paneling.

Turkish Bath (Hamam)
The baths were also damaged in the fire of 1912, at which time the changing room collapsed. It was spared from destruction during the Great Palace Excavation and remains in ruinous condition. It has a changing room leading into an L-shaped warm room (iliklik) that wraps around the hot room, and a furnace (külhan) that supplied the hot water. The hot room can be entered from either wing of the warm room and consists of a hexagonal bathing area at the center surrounded by private bathing cells (halvet) that square off the room. It has lost its dome and marble fixtures.

Tomb
The tomb of Sultan Ahmet I the türbe (tomb) of the Blue Mosque’s great patron, is on the north side of the mosque facing Sultanahmet Park. Ahmet, who had ascended to the imperial throne aged 13, died one year after the mosque was constructed, aged only 27. Buried with Ahmet are his wife, Kösem, who was strangled to death in the Topkapı Harem, and his sons, Sultan Osman II (r 1618-22), Sultan Murat IV (r 1623-40) and Prince Beyazıt (murdered by Murat).

The tomb is decorated with 7th century Iznik tiles and plaster work in a square plan. The tomb of Sultan Ahmed I commenced by Sultan Mustafa I and was finished by Sultan Osman II (Osman the Young) It took 3 years and was completed in the year 1619. The architect was Sedefkar Mehmed Ağa who had also built the Sultanahmed Mosque (Blue Mosque) complex. This hall is extended with an eyvan opposite the entry. The interior is decorated with Kütahya tiles, penwork (kalemisi) and painting on plasterwork (malakari) that was restored in the 19th century. The exterior is paneled with marble.

The tomb of Sultan Ahmet I is located to the north of Sultanahmet Mosque (Known as Blue Mosque). Ahmet I was born in 1590 and became sultan when he was only 14. He was the one who rejected and stopped the tradition of killing siblings for the unity of the country which started with Beyezid and even became a law during the time of Fatih. He also commanded that the throne should be ascended by the eldest one in the dynasty. In 1617 Sultan Ahmed I died and was buried in his tomb.

Sultan Ahmet Tomb has a square plan and is covered with a dome that is supported by a polygon drum. The arcade after the entrance is covered with three domes. The inside of the tomb is decorated with rich tiles, pen and wood crafts. Above the tile panels, there is an epigraph surrounding the structure written with white calligraphy over dark blue background. In the tomb, also buried Kösem Sultan (Mahpeyker Sultan, wife of Sultan Ahmed I), their sons Sultan Murad IV and Sultan Osman II, their daughter Ayşe Sultan in addition to about forty other members of the dynasty .

Cemetery
Located on the north west corner of the of Sultan Ahmed Mosque (The Blue Mosque) complex.

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HIPPODROME SPHENDONE

Sultanahmet, Fatih - İstanbul - Turkey

GPS : 41°00'14.1"N 28°58'26.2"E / 41.003917, 28.973944



PHOTOGRAPHS ALBUM

At the southern end of the Hippodrome, where the land begins to slope down to the sea, a series of massive vaults were constructed to serve as a retaining wall for the Sphendone, that curved section of the track where it turns back to the starting gates. In 1927, a British expedition led by Stanley Casson spent four months excavating and studying the Hippodrome, especially the foundation of the Sphendone.

Behind the twenty-five supporting arches (some still visible above) were found a corresponding number of concentric chambers opening out onto a main corridor. After a devastating earthquake in AD 551 (which also collapsed the dome of Hagia Sophia), these arches were bricked up and a series of buttresses added. Sometime later, the chambers themselves were closed off and converted to a cistern.

Around the entire Hippodrome was an arcade of columns, as can be seen in the drawings below. The itinerary of an anonymous Russian pilgrim records that thirty columns still were standing early in the fifteenth century. When Petrus Gyllius (the Latinized version of Pierre Gilles) visited in 1544-1547 as a deputy of François I, seventeen remained, all of them "supported by arched foundations that lie level with the plain of the Hippodrome but rise above the ground to a height of fifty feet". But, he says, they soon were removed by Süleyman (the Magnificent) to build a hospital.

"I was concerned to see them thus demolished, not so much for the use they were intended but because some of them were squared out for paving a bath." The Corinthian capitals of white marble, "made after the most exact plans of ancient architecture," were reshaped to cover a bake house, and the pedestals and entablature to build a wall. A section of column found by Casson in the Hippodrome also is the same size and type as those in the courtyard of the Sultan Ahmet Mosque (right).

Backed against this arcade of columns were tiers of seats, which the crusader Robert de Clari counted as thirty or forty rows. They, too, seem to have been used as paving stones for the courtyard of the mosque. And some, "which had survived until only a few years ago," were taken by Ibrahim Pasha, Süleyman's grand vizier, to construct his palace across from the obelisk of Theodosius.

Originally, the tiers had been built of wood and repeatedly were set ablaze during factional violence in AD 491, 498, and 507 (when an arch also collapsed). The last conflagration occurred during the Nika riot in AD 532, when the factions again set fire to the tiers, burning part of the colonnade. No other fires are reported, and it is presumed that Justinian I rebuilt the seats in marble. Although Gyllius comments on the fine view from the top seats, the Sphendone more often was the scene of public executions and so was especially prized by the populace for the political theater it offered.

Under Valentinian I, for example, the chief eunuch was burned alive at the Sphendone during the chariot races, and a prefect being questioned by the senate was tripped up and fell at the turning post, where he was dragged away by the mob (Chronicon Paschal, 369, 465). Others were mutilated, decapitated, and executed. The last was an attendant to a rival of Andronicus I Comnenus, who had the lamentable young man repeatedly thrust by long poles into a fire made hotter still by brush wood and naphtha.

Andronicus, himself, perished even more miserably in the Hippodrome, being butchered after every indignity while being suspended by his feet near the she-wolf on the spina (349-352). Casson established that the Sphendone was a semicircle, and the diameter of the Hippodrome to be 117.5 meters (385.5 feet) and its length 480 meters (almost 1575 feet). Originally, the track was 4.5 meters (almost 15 feet) below the present surface level, the deposit of earth and debris having accumulated during the construction of the Sultan Ahmet Mosque.

Surprisingly, and in spite of Robert de Clari's remark that "Lengthwise of this space ran a wall, full fifteen feet high and ten feet wide," Casson found no evidence of a spina along the axis and concluded that the monuments, themselves, served the purpose, possibly joined by wooden barriers. Too, the pedestal of the column of Porphyrogenitus was discovered to have been fitted to serve as a fountain, with a spout on each of its four sides. A similar water conduit was found to run beneath the obelisk of Theodosius.

The Serpent Column rests on a reused column capital which, in turn, sits on two water conduits sunk into the original clay bedding of the Hippodrome and also served as a fountain. There even was a tradition that wine, milk, and water poured from the mouths of the serpents. Although Casson suggests that the column originally might have been located elsewhere in the Hippodrome and moved to its present location only at the close of the Byzantine period, it more likely always has been on the spina.

The hippodrome was one of five types of places of public entertainment in cities of Antiquity. The odeon (recital hall) was comparatively small in size and capacity, and was the only one roofed over.

The others, open to the sky, differed in functions: the theater (theatron), semi-circular in shape, intended for various stage presentations; the amphitheater (amphitheatrum or "double theater"), elliptical in shape, developed by the Romans for gladiatorial and animal spectacles; the stadium (stadion), a hair-pin rectangle in shape (with one end curved), intended for foot-racing; and the hippodrome (Roman circus), of essentially the same shape, but larger, for horseback or chariot races. All forms had seating of tiered stone benches built over internal vaulting. Their respective functions could sometimes overlap.

Constantinople's Hippodrome, imitating Rome's archetypal Circus Maximus, was among the largest. In its Byzantine form, it measured somewhere between 450 and 480 meters in length, 117 meters in external width and about 80 meters in internal width. Its estimated seating capacity was 100,000. The southwestern semicircular end (the sphendone, from "sling") was topped by a colonnade. At the straight (northeast) end, there were twelve gates (carceres; kankella, thyrai) that could be opened mechanically at the same moment.

On a tower over these gates stood the famous four bronze horses carried off by the Venetians after 1204 and placed over the portal of the San Marco Basilica. At about the midpoint on the eastern side, above the seats, was the imperial box (kathisma), which connected to the Great Palace complex behind it. Down the center of the arena ran the barrier wall, or spina (euripos), around which the races were run in counterclockwise course.

At each end of the spina was a turning-post or meta (kampter), and along this barrier were mounted various ornaments, as well as frames each holding the pivotable metal figures of seven dolphins, which could be rotated in turn to mark the running of the seven laps in each race. These races, held at regular points each year, were run by charioteers, each in a quadriga, a two-wheeled car pulled by a team of four horses. Between races, acrobats, dancers, and musicians offered entertainment.

Structurally, the Hippodrome predates Constantinople itself. The ancient Greek city of Byzantium, destroyed by Septimius Severus (193-211) for its disloyalty, was rebuilt by him in 203. His gigantic supporting masonry can still be seen beneath the Hippodrome's sphendone on its sloping south hill. The Severan Hippodrome was left unfinished. It was expanded and completed in the context of the transformation by Constantine the Great (324-337) of old Byzantium into his new capital of Constantinople, finished in 330.

Constantine was followed by his successors in adorning the Hippodrome's spina with sculptural treasures from around the empire, imitating the Circus Maximus.6 There were notable bronze statues, and in the center was placed at some point the great bronze Serpent Column that had been dedicated at Delphi in honor of the Greek victory over the Persians in 479 B.C. The original meanings of these monuments were not always understood fully: the Serpent Column itself was for a while fitted out as a fountain.

To its north, meanwhile, an Egyptian obelisk had been placed. It was originally one of a pair set up near Thebes by Pharaoh Thutmose III in the 5th c. B.C. Its sister was mounted in the Circus Maximus in Rome, while this one was brought to Constantinople. It was shattered in transit, but in 390 the surviving upper third was set up in honor of Emperor Theodosius I (379-395), atop a base carved with triumphal scenes showing the Emperor and his sons, plus scenes of the obelisk's erection.

At the other side of the Serpent Column was constructed, probably also in the fourth century, a built-up masonry obelisk. In the sixteenth century a French traveller gave named it the "Colossus" because of an inscription - comparing it to the ancient Colossus of Rhodes - set on it by Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos (913-959), to whom this obelisk has also been erroneously attributed.

In the transformation of the city from Byzantium to his new capital, Constantine focused on the adornment of the monumental core of the city, first by finishing the Severan projects. The monumental development that included the emboloi, the Tetrastoon, the Basilica, the Baths of Zeuxippos and the Hippodrome became the cornerstone of the Constantinian plan. The Constantinian manipulations of the extant Severan buildings created a monumental set of interrelated yet independent public spaces that responded to and defined public urban life.

By concentrating five major imperial foundations (the Augustaion, the Basilica, the Hippodrome, the Great Palace and the Baths of Zeuxippos) in a relatively confined area, Constantine sought to give a monumental expression of the romanitas of the urban character of the city: the overarching magnificence of Rome, its empire and its institutions. The Hippodrome and its associated palace was the manifestation of a singularly Roman mentality; it was a combination evident in the Tetrarchic capitals of the Roman world that derived ultimately from the relationship between the Circus Maximus and the imperial residence at Rome.

The image of romanitas conjured by the city’s institutions and monuments was at once general and specific. On the one hand, places as the Hippodrome and the Zeuxippos created a sense of participation in the Roman imperial experience. On the other hand, the specific conjunction of Hippodrome and Palace created a more specifically Roman link that bound Constantinople directly and intimately to the city of Rome, transforming it into the New Rome.

In ancient cities, the theaters were places of lively public assembly as well as entertainment. As proto-Byzantine Constantinople took shape, it developed none of the old open-air theaters, so the Hippodrome became the city's largest place of regular public assembly, as part of an integrated complex. To its northeast lay the great square of the Augustaion, around which stood major public and governmental buildings. Beyond that was the Patriarchate and the Great Church of Hagia Sophia, site of the Empire's spiritual ceremonial.

While the adjacent Great Palace housed court ceremonial, the Hippodrome was the place for political ceremonial. Here, and only here, the Emperor faced the mass of urban populace during regular festivities. Here new Emperors were presented, important executions carried out (e.g., of the general Narses by Emperor Phokas in 603) and celebrations were held (e.g., the triumph the general Belisarius under Justinian in 534).

It was an essential point for triumphal imperial ideology since it enabled the association of racing games with the imperial triumphs; this theme occurs frequently in the imperial iconography and was manifested in the Obelisc of Theodosios I, on the base of which the scene with the emperor presiding the games is juxtaposed with scenes of imperial triumph over the barbarians.

Popular acclamations in the Hippodrome extoled imperial omnipotence as a ritual, in which the main actor was the populace and which remained lively even at a later era, as shown by the Book of Ceremonies. Moreover, the racing operations generated the only institutions allowing some active popular participation. These were the famous demes, the circus factions. Transplanted from Rome to Constantinople (and matched in other cities) were the four fan-clubs, identified by colors, that supported the professional chariot racers, often widely acclaimed celebrities.

The two minor factions, the Whites (Leukoi) and the Reds (Rousioi) were overshadowed and virtually subsumed by the two major ones the Blues (Venetoi) and the Greens (Prasinoi). Each faction (factio; meros, demos) had reserved seats on the western side of the Hippodrome, opposite the kathisma and on either side of the finish-line, plus club-houses and facilities in the vicinity.

As the demes (especially the Greens and the Blues) grew in importance and developed their characteristic features as kinds of political parties, the Hippodrome became a place where the populace ventilated its opinion and staged politically charged acclamations, assuming opposing identities in court partisanship, in social-class ties, and in the highly explosive religious controversies of the day. In order to secure the popular support they needed, emperors often found themselves driven to favour one or other of the demes, whose intervention more than once proved crucial for imperial politics.

Their unruliness reached a peak in January 532 when they temporarily joined forces in the so-called Nika Riots. For nineteen days they defied the Emperor Justinian (527-565), raged destructively through the city, and tried to dethrone him. The disturbances were suppressed only when some 30,000 rioters were caught in the Hippodrome and massacred.

Briefly curtailed, the factional disturbances recurred in the seventh century, but the organizations were reduced to increasingly ceremonial functions by the eighth century, their titular leaders serving tame ritual roles. In fact, the factions' supposed status as substitute "political parties" in their heyday has been exaggerated: their actual members were never more than a fraction of the populace, and, despite a few neighborhood functions, they were little more that rowdy sports clubs.

If the factions were diminished, the popular taste for chariot racing was not reduced, despite long opposition from the Church. As the sport waned and disappeared in the Empire's remaining cities, it persisted as a popular distraction in the capital until final disruption by the Fourth Crusade (1202-04). Visitors in the twelfth century still reported the spectacles offered there. Nevertheless, competition to the old sport came from alternative entertainments, such as Western-style tournaments, particularly favored by the Latin-admiring Emperor Manuel I (1143-1180).

Grimmer function was served when the urban mob presided over the savage torture and execution of deposed Emperor Andronikos I (1183-1185). Already decrepit structurally, the Hippodrome began to fall into decay during the Latin occupation (1204-61), its treasures and decorations looted or destroyed by the Crusaders. In Byzantium's two final centuries the Hippodrome became a ruin, though still used occasionally for equestrian jousts.

When the Ottoman Turks took the city in 1453, they left the site open, using it as an exercise area called the Atmeydanı (the Field of Horses). But the sphendone colonnade was pulled down in 1550, while the old seating structures were gradually encroached upon and cannibalized by new Turkish buildings (e.g., Ibrahim Pasha's Palace in the sixteenth century, Sultan Ahmet I's "Blue Mosque" in the seventeenth).

In 1700 some rowdy members of a Polish diplomatic delegation decapitated the Serpent Column, carrying off its top; though the upper head of one of the three serpents has survived in the Archaeological Museum of Istambul. In 1890 the French designer Bouvard began re-designing a reduced park within the old Hippodrome space.

This design was completed after a decade at the northeast corner with the elaborate fountain donated to Sultan Abdülhamit II by Kaiser Wilhelm II in honor of his visit to the city in 1895. Some scattered excavations around the area have revealed small traces of the Hippodrome and its surroundings. But this park, an undeniably lovely public place, still incorporates at its center the two obelisks and the trunk of the Serpent Column.

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ARASTA BAZAAR

Sultanahmet, Fatih - İstanbul - Turkey

GPS : 41°00'19.0"N 28°58'42.5"E / 41.005278, 28.978472



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"Arasta" is a bazaar where handcraft products are sold. The Arasta Bazaar is located directly behind the Blue Mosque, on the north side of Torun Street. There are more than eighty stores in the bazaar. It is also known as the “Sipahi Çarşısı” in Turkish because the needs of the Sipahi (the name of an Ottoman cavalry corps) were sold here during the Ottoman period. Tucked away next to the Blue Mosque in two short shop-lined pedestrian streets is the Arasta Bazaar - Sultanahmet's own miniature version of the Grand Bazaar.
 
Built at the same time as the Blue Mosque, this area originally served as a marketplace, with the rents from the shops going toward the upkeep of the mosque. During Ottoman times, it was known as the Sipahiler Bazaar, and specialized in items for the cavalry. Later it fell out of use and was used as a stable for horses. Ravaged by fires, the area was left in ruins and largely ignored for many years.

After a fire in 1912, the bazaar lay in ruins for a long time. Later, it was occupied by slum residents. The slums were laterremoved and shops were restored. Revamped in 1974, it now houses 83 shops, most specializing in carpets and textiles, but with the usual touristy kitsch thrown in for good measure to hopefully tempt some of the passing tourists to wander inside for a look. As you wander the streets, take a break from window-shopping and look at the walkway itself. The Bazaar was put into service by the General Directorate of Turkish Foundations in the 1980s.

For carpet and felt shopping, Arasta offers a much more laid-back atmosphere than many parts of the Grand Bazaar. During tourist season shopkeepers are out, as to be expected, trying to lure customers and offering endless glasses of tea, but there is not the persistent hassling found in many of the other parts of Sultanahmet. A large number of the customers who shop here are serious collectors who know what they are looking for and where to find it.

Here and there, you will see bits and pieces of mosaics and tiles poking up between the stones. These are some of the remnants from the Great Palace of Byzantium built by Constantine. Thought to have at one time extended from the Hagia Sophia and Hippodrome down to the coastline, the basic design was planned by the Emperor Constantine I.

The vast structure contained an assortment of state buildings, including numerous courtyards, throne rooms, audience rooms, churches, chapels, fountains, libraries, assembly halls, thermal baths and stadiums. Over the centuries, the complex fell victim to fires, earthquakes and neglect. The mosaics that remain from this mighty palace can be viewed at the Mosaic Museum, next door to the Arasta Bazaar. After winding around underground to view the impressive artwork, the exit deposits visitors once again at the heart of the bazaar.

The Arasta Bazaar was re-built on Byzantine ruins and is located on a narrow street with many lovely gift shops selling carpets, kilims, travel souvenirs, İznik tiles, scarves, etc on both sides of the street. The Arasta Bazaar complex was built at the same time as the Blue Mosque and functioned as a market area, the rents of which went towards the mosque's upkeep. It comprises 2 shop lined squares behind the Blue Mosque and a row of stable like shops stretching the length of the mosque's precinct.

The Arasta Bazaar in Istanbul is a small market close to the Sultan Ahmed Mosque. It is known for its jewelry, pottery, spice, textiles, and carpet shops. As opposed to the large crowds at the Grand Bazaar, the Arasta Bazaar is more low-key. Located at the Arasta Bazaar is the Great Palace Mosaic Museum.

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WALLED COLUMN

Sultanahmet Square, Fatih - Istanbul - Turkey

GPS : 41°00'19.6"N 28°58'29.5"E / 41.005436, 28.974865



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In the 10th century the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus built another obelisk at the other end of the Hippodrome. It was originally covered with gilded bronze plaques, but they were sacked by Latin troops in the Fourth Crusade. The stone core of this monument also survives, known as the Walled Obelisk.

Located in Sultanahmet Square, the Walled Column (Örme Sütun) was originally built in the 4th and 5th century, fell into ruin, and was repaired by Constantine VII in 944. The Column was built of dressed stone, is 20,68 meters high and rests on a 1,60 meter high pedestal.

Built of roughly cut stones, this imitation obelisk stands at the southern side of the Hippodrome. Its exact date of construction is unknown. It is named after the Emperor Constantine Porphyroenitus who had it repaired in the 10th century.

The 32 m (105 ft)-high obelisk was constructed of roughly cut stones by Constantine VII. Its exact construction date is unknown, but it is named after Constantine VII after he repaired it in the tenth century. At that time, it was reportedly decorated with gilded bronze plaques that portrayed the victories of Basil I who was the grandfather of Constantine VII.

Also there was a sphere at the top of obelisk. However, reportedly these gilded bronze plaques were stolen and melted down by Fourth Crusaders in 1204.
Since young Janissaries liked to use the obelisk to climb and show their prowess, the obelisk suffered further damage to its surface.

At that time, it was reportedly decorated with gilded bronze plaques that portrayed victories of Basil I who was grandfather of Constantine VII. Also there was a sphere at the top of obelisk. However, reportedly these gilded bronze plaques were stolen and melted by Fourth Crusaders in 1204.

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THEODOSIUS COLUMN

Sultanahmet Square, Fatih - Istanbul - Turkey

GPS : 41°00'21.3"N 28°58'31.4"E / 41.005921, 28.975382



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The Obelisk of Theodosius (Turkish: Dikilitaş) is the Ancient Egyptian obelisk of Pharaoh Tutmoses III re-erected in the Hippodrome of Constantinople (known today as At Meydanı or Sultanahmet Meydanı, in the modern city of Istanbul, Turkey) by the Roman emperor Theodosius I in the 4th century AD.

The obelisk was first set up by Tutmoses III (1479-1425 BC) to the south of the seventh pylon of the great temple of Karnak. The Roman emperor Constantius II (337-361 AD) had it and another obelisk transported along the river Nile to Alexandria to commemorate his ventennalia or 20 years on the throne in 357.

The Obelisk of Theodosius is the Ancient Egyptian obelisk of Pharaoh Tutmoses III which was re-erected in the Hippodrome of Constantinople by the Roman emperor Theodosius I who ruled 378-392 AD.

The other obelisk was erected on the spina of the Circus Maximus in Rome in the autumn of that year, and is today known as the Lateran obelisk, whilst the obelisk that would become the obelisk of Theodosius remained in Alexandria until 390, when Theodosius I (378-392 AD) had it transported to Constantinople and put up on the spina of the Hippodrome there.

The obelisk was first set up by Tutmoses III (1479-1425 BC) at the great temple of Karnak. Each of its four faces has a single central column of inscription, celebrating Tutmoses III's victory on the banks of the river Euphrates in 1450 BC.

The Obelisk of Theodosius is of red granite from Aswan and was originally 30 m tall, like the Lateran obelisk. The lower part was damaged in antiquity, probably during its transport or re-erection, and so the obelisk is today only 18.54 m (or 19.6 m) high, or 25.6 m if the base is included. Between the four corners of the obelisk and the pedestal are four bronze cubes, used in its transportation and re-erection.

The marble pedestal had bas-reliefs dating to the time of the obelisk's re-erection in Constantinople. On one face Theodosius I is shown offering the crown of victory to the winner in the chariot races, framed between arches and Corinthian columns, with happy spectators, musicians and dancers assisting in the ceremony. In the bottom right of this scene is the water organ of Ctesibius and on the left another instrument.

 This obelisk once graced the Karnak Great Temple of Amun (Amon) in ancient Thebes (now, Luxor). It was one of two erected at the south of the 7th Pylon of the Great Temple by Tuthmosis III. No one knows who ordered its removal from Karnak, or whether it was still standing when it was taken. It was transported to Alexsandria under the orders of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Emperor Constantius II [reigned A.D. 337-361.

He is different from Constantinus II, just one letter is different ("tius" vs. "tinus"), who transported an obelisk to Rome, which is now called "Lateran Obelisk", and then finally transported to Constantinople now Istanbul] by the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius I [reigned A.D. 379-395]. It was erected in A.D. 390.

There are obvious traces of major damage to the pedestal and energetic restoration of it. Missing pieces have been replaced, at the pedestal's bottom corners, by cubes of porphyry resting on the bronze cubes already mentioned - the bronze and porphyry cubes are of identical form and dimensions. There is also a vertical gash up one of the obelisk's faces, which look like a canal from above. These repairs to the base may be linked to the cracking of the obelisk itself after its suffering a serious accident (perhaps an earthquake) at an unknown date in antiquity

The pedestal's east face bears an inscription in five Latin hexameters. This is slightly broken at the bottom but it was transcribed in full by travellers in the 16th century. It reads :

DIFFICILIS QVONDAM DOMINIS PARERE SERENIS
IVSSVS ET EXTINCTIS PALMAM PORTARE TYRANNIS
OMNIA THEODOSIO CEDVNT SVBOLIQVE PERENNI
TER DENIS SIC VICTVS EGO DOMITVSQVE DIEBVS
IVDICE SVB PROCLO SVPERAS ELATVS AD AVRAS

Translation : "Though formerly I opposed resistance, I was ordered to obey the serene masters and to carry their palm, once the tyrants had been overcome. All things yield to Theodosius and to his everlasting descendants. This is true of me too - I was mastered and overcome in three times ten days and raised towards the upper air, under governor Proculus."

On the west face the same idea is repeated in two elegiac couplets rendered in Byzantine Greek, though this time it reports that the re-erection took 32 days (TPIAKONTA ΔYO, last line) not 30

KIONA TETPAΠΛEYPON AEI XΘONI KEIMENON AXΘOC
MOYNOC ANACTHCAI ΘEYΔOCIOC BACIΛEYC
TOΛMHCAC ΠPOKΛOC EΠEKEKΛETO KAI TOCOC ECTH
KIΩN HEΛIOIC EN TPIAKONTA ΔYO

Translation : "This column with four sides which lay on the earth, only the emperor Theodosius dared to lift again its burden; Proclos was invited to execute his order; and this great column stood up in 32 days."

Only the top section survives, and it stands today where Theodosius placed it, on a marble pedestal. The obelisk has survived nearly 3,500 years in astonishingly good condition.

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SERPENT COLUMN

Sultanahmet Square, Fatih - Istanbul - Turkey

GPS : 41°00'20.4"N 28°58'30.3"E / 41.005658, 28.975088



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The Serpent Column (Greek Trikarenos Ophis), Turkish, Yılanlı Sütun) - also known as the Serpentine Column, Delphi Tripod or Plataean Tripod - is an ancient bronze column at the Hippodrome of Constantinople (known as Atmeydanı "Horse Square" in the Ottoman period) in what is now Istanbul, Turkey.

It is part of an ancient Greek sacrificial tripod, originally in Delphi and relocated to Constantinople by Constantine I the Great in 324. It was built to commemorate the Greeks who fought and defeated the Persian Empire at the Battle of Plataea (479 BC). The 8-meter high column originally stood before the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. It was brought to Istanbul in 324 by Constantine and erected in the middle of the Hippodrome. The heads of the serpents, intact until 1700, disappeared at that time. One of the missing heads was later found and it is now on display at the Archeological Museum.

This is one of the oldest monuments in Istanbul. The heads of the three intertwined serpents used to form the legs of a gold cauldron. The thirty-one Greek cities, which defeated the Persians in 5th century, BC melted the bronze items they had captured to create this unique monument.

Provenance
The Serpentine Column has one of the longest literary histories of any object surviving from Greek and Roman antiquity - its provenance is not in doubt and it is at least 2,489 years old. Together with its original golden tripod and bowl (both long missing), it constituted a trophy, or offering, dedicated to Apollo at Delphi. This offering was made in the spring of 478 BC, several months after the defeat of the Persian army in the Battle of Plataea (August, 479 BC) by those Greek city-states in alliance against the Persian invasion of mainland Greece (see Greco-Persian Wars).

Among the writers who allude to the Column in the ancient literature are Herodotus, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Diodorus Siculus, Pausanias the traveller, Cornelius Nepos and Plutarch.The removal of the column by the Emperor Constantine to his new capital, Constantinople, is described by Edward Gibbon, citing the testimony of the Byzantine historians Zosimus, Eusebius, Socrates, and Sozomenus.

Battle of Plataea
The invasion, which began in 480 BC, fell under the command of Xerxes I. A combined land and sea expedition, it was, for him, unfinished business. It followed the defeat of the expedition sent by his father, Darius, at the hands of the Athenians in the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. It had the twin objectives of forcing the submission of those city states on mainland Greece, who refused the symbolic tribute of "earth and water" to the Persian king, and of punishing those cities (Athens and Eretria) who had supported the Ionian Greeks, in their revolt against the Persians, begun in 499 BC, under the leadership of Aristagoras of Miletus.

The Athenians had sent 20 triremes and the Eretrians, 5 triremes. This struggle lasted until the defeat of the Ionians in a naval battle outside Miletus in 494 BC. Details of the course of the Battle of Plataea may be read elsewhere, but, in essence, the defeat of the Greeks at Thermopylae, and the retreat of the Greek naval forces from Artemesium, in August, 480 BC left the strategy of the Greek allies in ruins.

Nothing could prevent the Persian advance and the occupation and pillage of Athens. Only the brilliant planning and execution of the Athenian general, Themistocles, to evacuate the inhabitants of Athens to the island of Salamis, his stratagems, in persuading the reluctant Peloponnesian cities to stop and fight a naval battle in the Straits of Salamis rather than retreat to the Isthmus, and his guile in influencing Xerxes to attack the Greek fleet in the straits (September, 480 BC) gave the Greeks the respite they needed to recover.

After Salamis, Xerxes withdrew to Sardis, but left a land force in Thrace, under the generalship of the experienced campaigner, Mardonius. He re-possessed Athens in the spring of 479 BC, and after the failure of diplomacy conducted by Alexander of Macedon on behalf of the Persians, to persuade the Athenians to a separate peace, the war continued. On learning that a Spartan force was on the march from the Peloponnese, Mardonius set fire to Athens again and removed his force to a strategic position in Boeotia, north of the river Asopus.

The Greeks under the leadership of Pausanias, Regent of Sparta, drew up on high ground in defensive positions south of the river Asopus and above the plain of Plataea . After days of skirmishing and changes of position on the Greek side, Mardonius launched a full attack. The result of the complex battle was complete victory for the Spartans, under the leadership of Pausanias. Mardonius was killed and the Persians fled in confusion led by Artabazus, the Persian second in command.

The significance of the Battle of Plataea
The Greek victories at Plataea and contemporaneous naval battle at Mycale, though they did not end the war, had the result that never again would the Persian Empire launch an attack on mainland Greece. Afterwards, Persia pursued its policies by diplomacy, bribery and cajolement, playing one city state against another.

But, by these victories, and through the Delian League, Athens was able to consolidate its power in the flowering of Athenian democracy in 5th century Athens, under the leadership of Pericles, son of Xanthippus. After the Battle of Plataea, the last battle of the Greco-Persian Wars, Greeks built a bronze column of three intertwined snakes (Greek: meaning three-headed snake), whose bodies formed the column, to commemorate the 31 Greek city-states that participated in the battle.

According to Herodotus, the bronze column was built using the bronze from the melted-down Persian weapons. A golden tripod was also built using the Persian weapons, and the whole monument was dedicated to the god Apollo and was placed next to the altar of Apollo at Delphi. It was placed on top of a stone base, an inverted Byzantine capital.

In ancient writers
After describing the Greek victory at Plataea, in 479 BC, Herodotus recounts the collection of rich spoils, by the Helots, (the Spartan underclass), who had taken part in the battle, and then records the decision to dedicate an offering to Apollo at Delphi : “When the booty had been gathered together, a tenth of the whole was set apart for the Delphian god, and, from this, was made the golden tripod which stands on the three-headed bronze serpent nearest the altar.”

In the same chapter, Herodotus records that dedications were also made to Zeus at Olympia and to Poseidon at the Isthmus. It is significant that precedence was given to Apollo at Delphi, despite the ambiguities in the responses of the Delphic oracle about the outcome of the invasion, and a suspicion that Delphi was sympathetic to the Persians.

Thucydides and Demosthenes
An insight into the political squabbles of the victorious Greeks over this monument is given in the following passages. Full of arrogance over his victory at Plataea and the subsequent ease with which he punished the Theban leaders for their support of the Persians, Pausanias ordered a dedication on the column ascribing victory to himself alone. Subsequent events revealed his overweening ambition. He was in negotiation with the Persians and the Helots of Sparta to stage a rebellion, and set himself up as Tyrant, with Persian support.

Although his treachery was, at first, disbelieved in Sparta, it was eventually discovered by the Ephors at Sparta through his personal slave, and he was killed. Thucydides, describes the suspicions of the Spartans that Pausanias, the commander-in chief of the Greek forces at Plataea, was on the point of treason and going over to the Persians, citing the affair of the Serpentine column as a ground for such suspicion : “He Pausanias provided many grounds for suspicion by his disregard of the laws, his admiration of the Barbarians, and his dissatisfaction with things as they were. They examined the rest of his behaviour to see if he had in any way departed from established norms."

They then remembered that in the matter of the tripod at Delphi, which the Greeks set up from the first fruits of the victory over the Persians, he had thought fit, on his own account, to have a diptych engraved upon it : "Pausanias, commander-in-chief of the Greeks, when he had destroyed the army of the Medes, dedicated this memorial to Phoebus (Apollo)." At the time, the Lacedaemonians at once deleted the diptych from this tripod and engraved the names of the cities, who had joined together against the barbarian and set up the offering.”

Demosthenes, gives a significantly different account of the train of events. In a speech, “Against Neiara”, the orator recalls the conduct of Pausanias after the defeat of the Persians in the battle of Plataea over the Serpentine column : “Pausanias, King of the Lacedaemonians, caused a diptych to be inscribed on the tripod at Delphi, [ which those Greeks, who had fought as allies in the battle of Plataea and in the naval engagement at Salamis had together made from the spoils taken from the Barbarians and had set up in honour of Apollo as a memorial to their bravery], as follows: ‘Pausanias, commander-in-chief of the Greeks, when he had destroyed the army of the Medes dedicated this memorial to Phoebus (Apollo)’, as if the work and the offering were his alone, and not from the allies together. The Greeks were enraged and the Plataeans obtained leave to bring a suit, on behalf of the allies, against the Lacedaemonians for 1,000 talents at the Amphictyonic council; and they compelled the Lacedaemonians to erase the inscription and inscribe the names of those cities which had shared in the work”.

The orator goes on to argue that this action rankled with the Lacedaemonians and was a strong motive, 50 years later, in their influencing the Theban night attack on Plataea in 431 BC, which was the first action in the Peloponnesian war described in Thucydides book 2.

Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus, writing in 1st century BC, says that a couplet composed by the poet Simonides, replaced Pausanias’ unlawful personal dedication : “The saviours of Greece at large dedicated this, having delivered the cities from wretched servitude.”

Pausanias the Traveller
In the 2nd century AD, Pausanias, the travel writer, noticed the monument at Delphi:  “The Greeks together, from the spoils taken at the battle of Plataea, dedicated a gold tripod set on a bronze serpent. The bronze part of the offering was preserved there, even at my time, but the Phocian leaders did not leave the gold in place in the same way.” The Phocian General, Philomelus took the treasures in 345/4 BC to pay for mercenaries in the third Sacred War, an act of extreme sacrilege, which resulted in the expulsion of Phocia from the Amphictyonic league, by Philip II of Macedon, and a fine of 400 talents.

Even at the time of Pausanias’ visit, the sacred way, leading up to the temple of Apollo, was lined on both sides with monuments, statues and treasuries commemorating important events in Greek History. “Closest to the altar”, as Herodotus says, was the Serpentine column, the base of which has been found, as has the base of the altar, which was dedicated by the Chians. Above these loomed the great bronze statue of Apollo, and, on the architrave of the temple, shields commemorating a Greek victory over the Gauls. Pausanias also identified, the offering to Zeus at Olympia, and listed the names of the cities engraved upon it.

In Gibbon
In his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-89), Edward Gibbon refers to the Serpentine Column both in Chapter 17 (on the founding of Constantinople) and in Chapter 68 (on the triumphal entry of Mehmet II, the Conqueror into Constantinople on 29 May 1453) : The Circus or Hippodrome was a stately building about 400 paces in length and 100 in breadth. The space between the two metae or goals was filled with statues and obelisks; and we may still remark a very singular fragment of antiquity, the bodies of three serpents twisted into one pillar of brass. Their triple heads had once supported the golden tripod which, after the defeat of Xerxes, was consecrated in the temple of Apollo at Delphi, by the victorious Greeks.”

... and again...

From the first hour of the memorable 29th of May, disorder and rapine prevailed in Constantinople, till the eighth hour of the same day, when the Sultan himself passed in triumph through the gate of St. Romanus. He was attended by his vizars, bashaws, and guards, each of whom (says a Byzantine historian) was as robust as Hercules, dexterous as Apollo, and equal in battle to any ten of the race of ordinary mortals.

The conqueror gazed in satisfaction and wonder on the strange though splendid appearance of the domes and palaces, so dissimilar from the style of Oriental architecture. In the hippodrome, his eye was attracted by the twisted column of the three serpents, and, as a trial of his strength, he shattered with his iron mace or battleaxe the under-jaw of one of these monsters, which in the eyes of the Turks were the idols or talismans of the city.

In other sources
The somewhat chequered history of the monument, after its removal to Constantinople, may be gathered from various sources. According to W. W. How & J. Wells, it was converted into a triple-mouthed fountain by a later Emperor, was seen and described by travellers from 1422 onwards, and was thrown down in 1700, when the serpents heads were broken off. Marcus N. Tod says the level of the ground was raised in 1630, and the inscribed portion of the monument was then hidden.

The base of the column was excavated in 1855, under the supervision of C. T. Newton. Fifteen of the serpents’ coils had been hidden and the inscription, beginning at the 13th coil and ending at the 3rd was revealed. It was deciphered by C. Frick in 1856, by Fabricius in 1886 and by others since. The 13th coil carries the Laconic inscription: “Those who fought the war”, followed on coils 12 to 3 by the names of 31 city states. This contains 8 cities not named in Herodotus, book 9.28 as being present at the battle of Plataea, and excludes Pale, in Cephalonia, whom Herodotus did include.

Pausanias, paragraph above, lists the names on the offering to Zeus at Olympus, which exclude 4 cities inscribed on the Serpentine column. Perhaps this is a simple oversight by a copyist. Although the cities inscribed on the column exclude other cities mentioned by Herodotus as participating in the war, it is clear that the memorial relates to the Great Persian War as a whole, not just the battle of Plataea. The lists of states given by the three sources are set out in Appendix B. Coils 12 and 13 have been scarred and dented by sabre cuts, which made the inscriptions difficult to decipher.

The dedication, said by Diodorus to have been composed by Simonides [paragraph above] has not been found. One of the serpent heads survives in the Museum of Antiquities, Istanbul. This head has its under-jaw missing, a linkage to Edward Gibbon’s colourful description of the conqueror’s triumphal entry into Constantinople on 29 May 1453.

Current status
Pausanias informs us that roughly a hundred years later, the Phoceans used the golden tripod to fund their military during the holy war involving the Oracle of Delphi. Constantine the Great moved the Serpent Column to Constantinople to decorate the spina (central line) of the Hippodrome of Constantinople, where it still stands today.

The top of the column was adorned with a golden bowl supported by three serpent heads. The bowl was destroyed or stolen during the Fourth Crusade. Many Ottoman miniatures show the serpent heads were intact in the early decades following the Turkish conquest of the city. Ahmed Bican, from Gallipoli, has given a short description of the Column in his Dürr-i Meknün, written around the time of the Fall of Constantinople. He states that it is a hollow bronze of intertwined snakes, threeheaded, a talisman for the citizens against snake bites.

Between fifty to one hundred years after the Turkish conquest of Constantinople, the jaw of one of the three serpent heads was documented missing. There is a most likely apocryphal legend that Sultan Mehmed II, shattered it upon entering the city in triumph as its conqueror. Later, at the end of 17th century, all three of the serpent heads were destroyed. Again, although there is legend that a drunken Polish nobleman knocked them off, Nusretname "The Book of Victories" by Silahdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Ağa relates that the heads simply fell off on the night of October 20, 1700. Parts of the heads were recovered and are on display at the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.

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MILION STONE

Sultanahmet, Fatih - Istanbul - Turkey

GPS : 41°00'28.9"N 28°58'41.0"E / 41.008028, 28.978056



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In 20 BC Emperor Augustus erected a column in Foro Romano; it was called Miliarium Aureum because it served as the starting point for measuring the length of the roads leading to the main towns of the empire (it is now lost). In Constantinople this function was assigned to an arch (Milion) which was located at the northern end of the Hippodrome; recent excavations have brought to light a long stone which is thought to have been part of that arch.

Its purpose was the same as the Milion Stone of Rome in Italy. It marked the very point where distances of the major cities of the empire from Constantinople was calculated by and it’s base featured inscriptions showing some of those distances. At the time of Byzantine empire, the city was referred as The New Rome, and  the saying “every road leads to Rome” meant Constantinope in the Eastern Roman Empire and too the Milion Stone in the Hippodrome.

Today, remains of the Milion Stone is located near the water tower in Sultanahmet (towards the Basilica Cistern). The Milion was a monument in Constantinople. It was the origin and start of measurement of distances for all the roads leading to the cities of the Byzantine Empire, and had the same function which the Milliarium Aureum of Rome still has today.

The remains of the monument are located in Istanbul, in the district of Fatih, in the neighborhood of Cağaloğlu, at the northern corner of the square of Hagia Sophia, and close to the Basilica Cistern.

When Emperor Constantine rebuilt the city of Byzantium to make it his new imperial capital, which he named New Rome, he consciously emulated many of the features of Elder Rome. Among these was the Milion: it was a Tetrapylon surmounted by a dome, built in the first Region of the city, near the old Walls of Byzantium, at the very beginning of the main thoroughfare of the new city, the Mese, which at that point formed a bend.

The new building fulfilled the same role as the Milliarium Aureum in Rome: it was considered as the origin of all the roads leading to the European cities of the Byzantine Empire, and on its base were inscribed the distances of all the main cities of the Empire from Constantinople. The monument bordered to the East the Augustaeum, and was much more complex than its Roman counterpart.

It can be described as a double Triumphal Arch surmounted by a dome, which was carried by four arches. It was crowned by the statues of Constantine and his mother Helena with a cross looking towards east between them. A statue of the Tyche of the City stood behind them.

From the beginning of the sixth century, the building became an increasingly important station of the imperial ceremonial. Justinian I added to it a Sundial, while Justin II adorned the lower part with the statues of his wife Sophia, his daughter Arabia and his niece Helena. The monument was also adorned with equestrian sculptures of Trajan, Hadrian, Theodosius II and a bronze Quadriga of Helios.

During the first half of the eighth century, the vaults of the building were adorned by Emperors Philippikos and Anastasios II with paintings of past ecumenical councils, but during the Iconoclastic Age Emperor Constantine V replaced them with scenes from the Hippodrome.

During the Comnenian Age the Milion, due to its strategic position, witnessed fights in the city, like those between Nikephoros III and Alexios I, or those between imperial troops and Empress Maria of Antioch, who from this position was controlling the Augustaeum. In 1268/71, after the end of the Latin Empire, the Milion, together with the Augustaeum, became property of the church of Hagia Sophia.

After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, the building remained intact up to the end of the fifteenth century. It disappeared possibly at the beginning of sixteenth century because of the enlargement of the Aqueduct and the subsequent erection of the nearby Suterazisi (Turkish: "Water tower", lit. "water scale").

In the years 1967/68, following theoretical studies about the location of the monument and after the demolition of the houses placed above it, excavations revealed some foundations and a pillar (now put up again) belonging to the building. These remains could be positively identified as belonging to the Milion thanks to their vicinity to a part of bent Byzantine canalization. This seems to indicate the angle of the disappeared Mese as reported by the literary sources.

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