Tag: columns

The Basilica Cistern – Istanbul, Turkey

Istanbul has a lot of treasures above the ground that bring people to the city, but they also have one hidden gem that sits underneath its busiest part. If you look around the opposite side of the street that holds the parks and greatest monuments, you will see a line to a modern looking building that could not possibly hold the crowds that are gathered in the line. It has to be something though, if so many people are lined up to see it, and it would be worth your time if you joined the group to see what it was all about. If you did, you would be taken down to an underground cistern that at one time collected the drinking water for the city of Constantinople, but has sense been drained so people can wander around it and check out the structural marvel that the Emperor Constantine had made back during his rule in the fourth century.

The place is massive. It covers almost 10,000 square meters, and during its heyday, it could supply enough water for 100,000 people for one day. The design has arched ceilings and a variety of columns to keep all of this water safe. The people who constructed it did not spend a lot of time making sure all of the columns matched each other. They knew that they would be covered in water and nobody would be able to see them anyways, so when they built it, they grabbed columns from old buildings and used them to build this cistern. This made it so the columns have their own charm depending on what part of the cistern you find yourself in.

This leads to some interesting design choices in certain parts of the building. In the far corner, in the place they thought nobody would ever come, they had found some shorter columns used to keep the ceiling up, so in order to make up for this problem, they cut off the head of a couple of Medusa statues and placed them underneath the columns to make them tall enough. This makes this the busiest corner of the cistern, and it it fun to check out the faces that they deemed perfect to make the structure sound.

Since they have drained the structure, they have added a bunch of art work in the shallow water that makes the place even more exciting to visit. Some of them are simple designs of leaves or jellyfish, but there are plenty of half completed statues of men and women some of which are pretty creepy. The Medusa is the most terrifying of them all, and they have her hidden in the corner of the Cistern. Others are not as creepy, but a lot of it depends on the color of the light they are showing at the time you find yourself next to one of these statues.

The lighting definitely changes the mood of the place, and at time makes it appear really creepy. No matter the lighting, it is still a must visit place if you are in Istanbul. I have been to a lot of places all over the world, and I can not think of another place like this one. It has been the highlight of my trip out here so far, and I am glad that I was able to see the Basilica Cistern.

Until next time, keep searching for those hidden gems in your travels and make sure you share them with others so they are stay around for the next group.

The House of Dionysus – Paphos, Cyprus

I did not know a lot about the small island of Cyprus before I travelled out there for a long weekend. Everything I knew came from Shakespeare and Homer. I knew that many wars had fought on it because of its strategic position, and that it was one of the islands that Odysseus stopped at during his long voyage. Recently, there had been talks about Russian oligarchs losing their yachts that were parked on its shore, but beyond that I couldn’t tell much else about it.

I did discover that it is place of rich history and of great beauty. Just because of its location, I knew that I would be running into Greek and Roman ruins, and on my first day there, I was not disappointed. There are actually a lot of places to find ruins on the island, but the one that is closest to the waterfront of Paphos is the Kato Paphos Archeological Park. It sprawls all over a peninsula to the north and cost only 2.50 Euros for entry. I would recommend to go early because there is a lot to see and it closes down by 5 PM.

It is obviously still being dug up, so I am excited to go back in five or six years to see if anything has changed during that time, but in the meantime, there are a lot of hidden corners to explore that will keep anybody busy for a good portion of their day. There is also enough of variety among what to see so that it does not get boring. There are columns, caves, old buildings, and my favorite thing to see, the mosaics.

There is a really nice one in the House of Theseus which is out and exposed to the weather, and it really surprised me that they did not protect it better. I tried to get a good picture of it, but I had found it so late in the day that it was shrouded in shadows. Despite this, it was by far the most intricate of the mosaics and the best one to look at. I will leave it up to you to find it some day, and it will be worth the trip.

The House of Dionysus held the biggest collections of the mosaics, and most of them were surprisingly well preserved for how long they have been around. They depicted many of the greatest scenes from Greek mythology, and they had done a much better job of protecting them from the elements. Though all of the places that are presented in this historic sight, it was the House of Dionysus that impressed me the most. If you come here, and you don’t have a lot of time, I would make it for this spot because you will get the most out of the little time you have by coming here.

It was a nice introduction as to what the island of Cyprus had to offer, and it made me realize that there were many more surprises that I would find on my short weekend trip there.