Theodosius Cistern, Hippodrome & Sultanahmet Square Istanbul

Good morning. We've just gotten off the subway here in Sultanahmet yet again and today we are going to be going to see the Theodosius Cistern. There are a lot of famous cisterns here in Istanbul. Probably the most famous one is called the Basilica Cistern and we really wanted to see it but unfortunately it is closed right now. We're not sure if that's because of COVID or because of renovations so we decided to go see the Theodosius Okay, we've just arrived here to the Theodosius Cistern. Apparently there's a museum built on top and the cistern is underneath. Let's go inside and take a look. Okay, so we were duped a little bit on that one there. We have a free attraction to come to. Once we got here it turned out that it was 100 Turkish lira per person to come in here. Still very affordable for this experience. It's phenomenal. Okay, so this this space, this cistern is 1600 years old. They used it to store water obviously to feed the city of Constantinople and we got in here just in time for this light show that they do in here and when I saw that there was a light show I was like oh okay that sounds kind of cool but they did an excellent job kind of conveying the history of the space as well as the region. It was mesmerizing. It lasted about 10 minutes long and we got some great footage of it for you. So there is supposed to be a museum upstairs so we're going to go and see if we can't learn more about the history of this place. Okay, so your 100 liras in there is going to get you about 20 minutes inside the cistern itself. We were expecting a museum to be there as well. Turns out there's not. That's everything is what you see down inside the cistern. Still well worth 100 lira though. It's pretty phenomenal down there. It appears that they run that light show every hour on the hour and I would plan my visit so that you don't miss that. It was spectacular. It really showcased the vastness of the space as well as gave a little bit of a feel for the history of the region and the cistern. Okay, so we're going to go take a walk around see what else we can get into in this area here. Okay, so we're just walking along here and seeing what else we can get into here. We have some place in mind that we're trying to go right now but Angela is navigating so we don't really know where we are at all. We'll never get there. We're standing right now in Sultanahmet Square. This used to be the Hippodrome of Constantinople. It's got all these really interesting structures kind of placed throughout the middle of it. So this was used as a horse racing and a jousting arena stadium for about a thousand years from 200 to 1280. The Hippodrome had a capacity for a hundred thousand spectators at any one time and was modeled after the Circus Maximus in Rome. This behind us is the obelisk of Theodosius. How cool is it? So this was brought here by the Emperor Constantine to decorate this Hippodrome here. It was built initially in Egypt in 1450 BC. So this obelisk behind us is 3500 years old. It's pretty cool. So the second obelisk you see back behind us right now we have absolutely no information about whatsoever because I can't make heads or tails of what the I'm sure it's very interesting. So this behind us is the serpent column. You can see that it's been cut off at the top. It used to have a bunch of like intertwining snakes heads and whatnot at the top. This one came from in front of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. It was moved here but legend has it that there was a battle between the Persians and the Greeks and when the Greeks won the battle in 480 BC they took the shields and the swords of the Persians and melted them down to make this serpent statue. When was this erected here in Constantinople? I haven't the slightest clue. Okay so the serpent column back behind us right now stood at one point in time eight meters high. It was brought here and set up by Constantine I when he was establishing Constantinople as the new capital of Rome. Okay so we are at the subway station. We are going to wrap this video up here. We only have a couple of days left here in Istanbul and we are very excited about our next location and can't wait to show you that. So please leave a comment down below and be sure to like and subscribe to see what happens next.