An Underground Palace (Basilica Cistern)

Member Name: MykReeve

Product:	Basilica Cistern
Date:	25/06/01 (98 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Atmospheric, Not too expensive, Mostly good lighting

Disadvantages: Inappropriate music, Some weird lighting

The Basilica Cistern in Istanbul is certainly one of the oddest tourist attractions in the world. If you've seen a film set in Istanbul, then it's pretty likely you've seen the Basilica Cistern. It was featured in 'From Russia With Love' when Bond got into a boat to sail across the water-filled underground vault, and again in Jackie Chan's recent Hong Kong-funded action film 'The Accidental Spy' where Chan was attacked by bad guys on one of the walkways.

HISTORY

The Cistern was constructed in the Byzantine period of Istanbul's history. During Emperor Justinian's rule of the city in 532 AD, this underground vault was laid out to meet his Great Palace's ever-increasing demand for water. The Cistern lay undiscovered for about a century after the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453, and was rediscovered when local inhabitants were discovered to be lowering buckets from their basements into the vault to retrieve water, and even fish!

In the 19th century, a third of the structure was bricked off, and in 1988, the Cistern was drained, cleaned and restored, so that it could be opened to the public.

VISITING THE CISTERN

You enter the cistern through a pretty nondescript-looking small building at the Eastern end of Yerebatan Caddesi, which looks something like a public convenience. After buying your ticket, you head down the stairs into the Cistern itself.

The first thing that hits you is the drop in temperature; it's very chilly in the Cistern, relative to the outside temperature. The next thing is the sheer impressiveness of the place. As you walk down the stairs, the vault opens up before you, with an army of identical looking columns holding up the arched ceiling. Some 336 columns hold up the cistern's roof, each of them over eight metres high.

The lighting is subdued, but adequate to illuminate the whole vault, and give you an idea of just how big it is. M
ost of the lighting is white, revealing the yellow stone work of the supporting columns, the dark red brick ceiling, and patches of green algae on the walls and columns. However, in one far corner of the vault, seemingly randomly coloured lights flick on and off at intervals, turning columns pink, blue and green.

You walk around the cistern on wide wooden walkways, crossing the vault a few feet above the surface of the water, which is about a foot and a half deep. If you look down into the water as you walk around, you see fish swimming about in the Cistern, which vary in size enormously – up to some real giants!

At one time, I have read in other people's accounts of visits to the Cistern, you walked around to the accompaniment of loud, blaring opera music. Fortunately, the Turkish tourist authorities seem to have bowed to public outcry in this regard, and turned the volume down. When I visited, muted Mussorgsky was playing throughout, which was nothing like as distracting as guidebooks' accounts of the Cistern had led me to expect.

Some of the columns used in the Cistern's manufacture have been obviously borrowed from elsewhere. Most notable are the so-called "tear" columns, which bear a tear-drop like design, and the two Medusa columns. The Medusa columns are at the far end of the Cistern from the entrance, and are obviously different from most of the columns used in the Cistern's construction. The small area of the Cistern in which the Medusa columns can be found has been drained of water, so that you can see the bases from which they take their name – one of the Medusa column bases consists of an inverted Medusa head, the other has one resting on its side. These stone Medusa heads are thought to have been taken from an earlier structure – a nymphaeum; a shrine to water nymphs.

Near the entrance and exit of the Basilica Cistern, a local artist has provided some ceramic artwork, which
sits in the water, consisting of several lines of small white ceramic towers, some of which have been coloured with touches of gold paint. It looks quite odd, but is really not out of place in such a peculiar location.

On the way out of the Cistern, there is a small café, with tables and chairs protected from condensation drips falling from the ceiling by a shoddy looking sheet of tarpaulin. You leave via a staircase, which leads into a shop selling postcards, books and jewellery, which exits onto

OTHER CISTERNS

The Basilica Cistern is not the only such place in Istanbul – just off Divanyolu Caddesi, a little further to the West, can be found the entrance to the Cistern of 1,001 Columns. However, despite having opened a few years ago as a shopping arcade, this Cistern was no longer open to the public in 2001, when I visited the city.

CONCLUSIONS

Admission to the Basilica Cistern cost 4,000,000 Turkish lira in May 2001 (£2.60), which represents very good value for money for such a unique tourist attraction. The atmosphere of the place is truly amazing, and this is an absolute must-see for visitors going to Istanbul. The music is no longer as distracting and irritating as it once was, to judge from guidebooks' accounts of visits – however, peculiarly inappropriate classical music does still play continually throughout the Cistern. Guidebooks also frequently criticise the Cistern for garish lighting, however, I found the lighting of much of the Cistern to be good... apart from the one corner with flashing primary-coloured lights!

The Cistern also seemed a lot less busy than many of Istanbul's tourist attractions, which also served to make it a pleasant place to visit. The nearest tram stop is Sultanahmet, which is about a minute's walk away, along Divanyolu Caddesi.

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