Basilica Cistern
Basilica Cistern Located on the European side of Istanbul, it is the city's largest indoor cistern. It is entered from a small building to the southwest of the Hagia Sophia building. The ceiling of the place, which has the appearance of a column forest, is brick-built and cross-vaulted.
One of the magnificent historical structures of Istanbul is the Basilica Cistern, located in the southwest of Hagia Sophia. This large underground cistern, built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (527-565), was called the "Basilica Palace" among the people because of the marble columns rising from the water and appearing as innumerable. It is also known as the Basilica Cistern because there was a Basilica in the place where the cistern is located.
The cistern is a giant structure covering a rectangular area of 140 meters in length and 70 meters in width. Covering a total area of 9,800 m2, this cistern has a water storage capacity of approximately 100,000 tons. There are 336 columns, each 9 meters high, inside this cistern, which is descended by a 52-step stone staircase. These columns, erected at intervals of 4.80 meters from each other, form 12 rows of 28 columns each. Most of the columns, most of which are understood to have been collected from older buildings and carved from various types of marble, consist of one piece and some of them are made of two pieces. The headings of these columns have different features from place to place. While 98 of them reflect the Corinthian style, some of them reflect the Doric style. Most of the columns in the cistern are cylindrical except for a few that are angular or grooved. Since the 8 columns in front of the northeast wall towards the middle of the cistern were exposed to the danger of breaking during a construction in 1955-1960, each of them was frozen in a thick concrete layer and therefore lost its old characteristics. The ceiling of the cistern was transferred to the columns by means of arches. The 4.80-meter-thick brick walls and the brick-tiled floor of the cistern were plastered with a thick layer of Khorasan mortar and made watertight.
