Basilica Cistern
Sixth-century cistern with 336 marble columns rising from dark water, and two ancient Medusa heads.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Istanbul's Basilica Cistern starts with two carved Medusa heads at the far end of the chamber, one turned on its side and one upside down, and works back to why: Emperor Justinian ordered this cistern hollowed out in 532, right after riots had devastated his capital, and the roughly seven thousand workers building it raided older Roman ruins for stone whenever they ran short. It follows the cistern's long disappearance after Constantinople fell, and a sixteenth-century French scholar who found it by being rowed through the columns in the dark, fish moving beneath his boat. Listen from beside the water, where three hundred thirty-six columns rise around you in the grid the guide keeps returning to.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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