Basilica Cistern audio guide
We'll walk in the dark, a few metres below the street. Once your eyes adjust, the columns will emerge one by one.
- 1At the foot of the stairs
You've come down the stairs and are now inside a fifteen-hundred-year-old water reservoir. The Basilica Cistern was built in the sixth century under Emperor Justinian I. It takes its name from a great basilica that stood above it. Locals called it the Sunken Palace; walk among the columns and you'll see why. The cistern supplied water to the nearby Great Palace and the surrounding area. Water was carried by aqueducts from sources outside the city and collected here. In times of siege or drought, cisterns like this one kept the city alive.
- 2A forest of columns
Look at the columns stretching out in front of you. The cistern has three hundred and thirty-six columns, each about nine metres high, in twelve rows of twenty-eight. Most of the columns are marble, but their capitals don't match. That's because the builders used pieces brought from older buildings rather than carving new columns. So here you'll see capitals of different styles side by side. The brick vaults of the ceiling rest on the columns. Notice how your voice echoes as you walk: this place was never meant for visitors, but for storing water in silence.
- 3The forgotten cistern
In the Ottoman period, the city's water needs were met mainly by running-water systems and fountains, so the cistern was gradually forgotten. In the sixteenth century, the French scholar Petrus Gyllius, who came to Istanbul to trace its ancient buildings, found this cistern. According to his account, people in the neighbourhood lowered buckets through holes in their basements to draw water, and even caught fish. No one fully realised that such a vast structure lay beneath them. Gyllius took a small boat among the columns and wrote down what he saw. His account plays a big part in the cistern's fame today.
- 4The weeping column
Beside the walkway, you'll see a column with a shaft unlike the others. It is carved with motifs that look like eyes or teardrops, and it is always damp. That's why locals call it the Weeping Column or the Peacock-Eyed Column. Similar motifs appear on columns from one of the city's ancient forums, and this column is thought to have come from there. It is one of the best examples of how the cistern's builders reused pieces of older buildings.
- 5The Medusa heads
At the far end of the cistern, two Medusa heads carved in stone sit beneath two columns. One is placed on its side, the other upside down. In mythology, Medusa turned anyone who looked at her to stone, and in antiquity she was believed to ward off evil. No one knows where these heads came from. There are many stories about why they were placed sideways and upside down, but the most plausible explanation is quite simple: the builders used these blocks as bases to bring the columns to the right height and positioned them however they fitted best.
- 6The cistern today
The cistern reopened to visitors in 2022 after extensive restoration that began in 2017. Earthquake strengthening and new walkways were part of the work. Today the lighting is designed to highlight the columns and the surface of the water, and art installations are sometimes shown in the cistern. The cistern has also appeared in films, the best known being a 1963 James Bond film. Take one more look back as you leave: this darkness is the darkness that stored the city's water for fifteen hundred years.