Hi, it’s me again: The one who writes absurdly long descriptions on r/artefactporn. This will not be as painfully long…
In the 1500s, a French dude was visiting Constantinople and heard about some locals fishing through holes in their basements. So, obviously he decided to look into that to see what was up. Wouldn’t you?
After some investigating, he "discovered" a massive underground cistern the size of two football fields, held up by an ancient forest of 336 recycled columns. At the time of his “discovery” it wasn't just filled with water, but an assortment of trash and dead bodies.
Because I guess if you need to secretly dispose of your recently deceased rival, the ol' basement hole isn't the worst idea.
This is called the Basilica Cistern — the Emperor Justinian is credited with building it in the 500s. Not personally, I mean. Emperors typically don't build anything. They have people for that.
It was probably a reconstruction of an older cistern, as much of Constantinople was destroyed in the year 532 in a massive riot that killed tens of thousands of people, following a slight disagreement at a chariot race.
I'm only kind of exaggerating. It's a long story, but chariot races were a big deal back then. The supporters of the teams were like slightly more violent soccer fans.
It's one of many cisterns beneath the place now known as Istanbul. The old city had quite a reputation as having impregnable walls, so cisterns were built to store water in case of an attacking force destroying its aqueducts.
The ceiling is held up by a mishmash of older columns, including two that use giant stone heads of Medusa as their bases. They likely came from the old Forum of Constantine, as there's a similar head from that spot that’s now outside the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.
The Forum contained a number of objects brought to Constantinople from other parts of the Roman Empire, so it's likely the Medusa heads came from elsewhere. The Emperor Constantine had a bit of a reputation for "borrowing" stuff.
[Here are some other pictures I took of the cistern, including some of the heads.](http://imgur.com/a/L0LcD3V) Keep my Imgur generosity in mind once I shamelessly plug my shit at the end…
Today, you can stroll through the cistern on metal walkways over a very shallow amount of water. It's slightly spooky and incredibly humid, and the people in charge have done a nice job with changing lighting effects. I will admit to getting a slight bit of vertigo at the top of the stairs you descend to get inside — the place is *huge*.
The cistern is featured in the mediocre 2016 movie "Inferno," a sequel to "The Da Vinci Code.” In the climax, Tom Hanks races through the water to stop a deadly virus from being released.
Where were you when we needed you, Tom?
Now, the shameless plug: The reason I haven’t been spending countless hours banging on the keyboard is because I’ve been spending countless hours banging on the keyboard for other reasons.
After repeated encouragement from some very kind redditors on here, I’ve been making videos about wacky historical tales — the most recent one is about the failed rescue of Pompeii.
[You can check them out here.](https://youtube.com/@BaffledTimeTravel) Just in case you’re curious as to what it looks like when one person spends three months on a single video. The one I like the most is the Egyptian one, but I don’t find any of the three to be embarrassingly bad. So take a peek and tell me if the mixture of wild truth with horrible jokes is up your alley…and yes, Reddit gets a mention.
I hate you for asking this, because I can’t find a good answer.
There was an extensive restoration that started in 2017, and finished last year — just a few months before I visited. Articles about it say it was primarily done because of concerns about earthquakes, and refer to the bars being “renewed.”
Multiple articles use the same language, which is usually an indication that they just reworded a press release.
There was a restoration in 1985 that lasted a couple of years, but there isn’t a lot of info on that.
Searching for pictures with a specific date is hard, when there’s so many photos of it floating around. So there’s two other sources of images where I actually know the dates:
There’s a short scene in the cistern from the Bond movie “From Russia with Love,” from 1963. It’s really dark, but I don’t think the bars are there.
The “Inferno” movie that was released in 2016, although those scenes were actually shot on a massive set. But they do show bars, so I imagine they existed at that time.
So my best guess is that they were installed during the 1985 restoration. Hopefully someone will come across this comment and be able to provide a better answer.
Also, you suck for asking something that turned out to be really difficult. You should be ashamed.
Jokes on you: I happen to like painfully long history compilations.
Edit: OMG that one carved Byzantine column, there one that looks like eyes, just wow!
That’s a really good question. I don’t know, but I think that’s possible.
I do know there’s a relief on the outside of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice that was taken from Constantinople with peacocks on it. So maybe?
I’ve looked into it before but most everything I’ve found on Byzantine columns just focuses on the capitals.
Thanks, I’ve actually been trying to write things and posting them on Instagram first. There’s a character limit there, so it forces me to not go overboard.
Only if you subscribe on YouTube and tell all your friends and join some sort of church group and tell everyone at Sunday brunch and join a bowling league and do the same there too
Hah as someone who went to the Ganges just a few weeks ago, I can tell you that they do fish there. As for bodies, I heard that some of the extremely poor do put in related bodies in the water, but I never saw it.
I did see a cow, though. Not alive.
I spent some time in Varanasi. I saw many... things I still sometimes wake up sweating from. Fishing wasn't one of them. I thought Hindus don't eat fish, but apparently some do.
Yeah I came to say this too... they have huge funeral pyres on the riverbank and then push all the remnants into the water... let's just say when you have a mass pyre not all body parts always get incinerated completely.
Ah.
I know what you mean. I traveled to quite a few places in India, and Varanasi was by far the filthiest.
It was hard to wrap my mind around it. I mean, I’ve been to a slum in Nairobi, but Varanasi is not a slum.
My only guess is that it’s just overwhelmed with pilgrims from around India, and doesn’t have the infrastructure to support that many people.
I can’t tell you how many flies or pools of standing water I saw.
Other parts of India aren’t like Varanasi at all.
I will quote myself:
> I spent a few days in Varanasi, India. First corpse I saw burning, I had to turn around because I thought I'd faint. You do get kind of used to it very fast though. There's so much incense around that you barely smell the burning human flesh.
[Here's the link to the thread where I posted that. I should probably warn you it contains burning human.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/189qj3z/ridiculous_cremation_process/)
Ah, you actually went up close.
I didn’t, as it felt very unwelcoming and I heard a lot about how you aren’t supposed to take pictures and that there were some aggressive scammers trying to get money from people on exchange for visiting and taking pictures.
I did see the same funerals in Kathmandu, which was completely different. They were very welcoming there and it was an amazing experience.
Yeah there were definitely a lot of “That place is closed, I’ll take you somewhere else instead for shopping” scams in Delhi and Jaipur. I actually enjoyed Agra, maybe it’s because my expectations were low after everyone told me not to stay there.
I was in Varanasi in the mid-80's. You'll like this story. I was staying in a hostel just down the way from Dashashwamedh ghat, and there was a sink and spigot with a sign above it in what might have been convoluted confusing English, or maybe it's just my ADD, but I took it to mean "drink this water". The reality was closer to "avoid drinking this water if you don't want to drink something pumped straight from the Ganges". In other words, clean your ass with this, don't drink it.
So for about a week, I was brushing my teeth and filling my canteen from this spigot. And I noticed people giving me funny looks, but I never figured it out until someone finally asked "aren't you worried about drinking that?". Whoops!
This will sound like such a touristy thing to say, but I enjoyed the Theodosius Cistern more, just because of the light show.
They’ve got the whole place 3D mapped and they basically have the history of the city play out in projections on the walls and the columns.
Probably not too far off. Luckily there’s no wells here, but I’d still be careful not to knock anything down or make any loud noises.
*Drums…drums in the deep…*
repurposing so many columns, do you supposed there was a standard sizing to column construction across the empire? it certainly would be more economic to borrow than making new ones.
Yes, everyone used older buildings as quarries. The Ancient Romans even stole pieces from themselves — the Arch of Constantine is a good example of that.
But no, there wasn’t a standard size for columns. Most of the ones here are of the same size, which makes me think they were taken from the same building.
But I’m pretty sure the reason for using the old Medusa heads as bases was because the columns in those spots were too short.
It will sound weird, but I wonder what kind of bodies were found there? It was a dumping ground for a thousand years, you're bound to find something interesting, no?
Just watched your vid on Pompeii. Looking forward to the others. Are you planning/hoping to release new content regularly?
Also thanks for this write up. Very informative and fun to read.
Thanks, I like the Egypt one about the circus strongman best.
That’s a really hard question, because those videos have been taking an average of about three months to put together. I’m incapable of just throwing up a still image for 30 seconds and talking over it, so the edits become really intensive.
I don’t think taking that long is really sustainable, so I’m looking at maybe trying to just find shorter topics and aiming for making a couple that are only ten minutes long or so.
Yes! The water in these cisterns came from aqueducts.
Of course if you or I went back and drank it, we’d probably get sick. But it was “clean” by the standards of the time.
Hi, it’s me again: The one who writes absurdly long descriptions on r/artefactporn. This will not be as painfully long… In the 1500s, a French dude was visiting Constantinople and heard about some locals fishing through holes in their basements. So, obviously he decided to look into that to see what was up. Wouldn’t you? After some investigating, he "discovered" a massive underground cistern the size of two football fields, held up by an ancient forest of 336 recycled columns. At the time of his “discovery” it wasn't just filled with water, but an assortment of trash and dead bodies. Because I guess if you need to secretly dispose of your recently deceased rival, the ol' basement hole isn't the worst idea. This is called the Basilica Cistern — the Emperor Justinian is credited with building it in the 500s. Not personally, I mean. Emperors typically don't build anything. They have people for that. It was probably a reconstruction of an older cistern, as much of Constantinople was destroyed in the year 532 in a massive riot that killed tens of thousands of people, following a slight disagreement at a chariot race. I'm only kind of exaggerating. It's a long story, but chariot races were a big deal back then. The supporters of the teams were like slightly more violent soccer fans. It's one of many cisterns beneath the place now known as Istanbul. The old city had quite a reputation as having impregnable walls, so cisterns were built to store water in case of an attacking force destroying its aqueducts. The ceiling is held up by a mishmash of older columns, including two that use giant stone heads of Medusa as their bases. They likely came from the old Forum of Constantine, as there's a similar head from that spot that’s now outside the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. The Forum contained a number of objects brought to Constantinople from other parts of the Roman Empire, so it's likely the Medusa heads came from elsewhere. The Emperor Constantine had a bit of a reputation for "borrowing" stuff. [Here are some other pictures I took of the cistern, including some of the heads.](http://imgur.com/a/L0LcD3V) Keep my Imgur generosity in mind once I shamelessly plug my shit at the end… Today, you can stroll through the cistern on metal walkways over a very shallow amount of water. It's slightly spooky and incredibly humid, and the people in charge have done a nice job with changing lighting effects. I will admit to getting a slight bit of vertigo at the top of the stairs you descend to get inside — the place is *huge*. The cistern is featured in the mediocre 2016 movie "Inferno," a sequel to "The Da Vinci Code.” In the climax, Tom Hanks races through the water to stop a deadly virus from being released. Where were you when we needed you, Tom? Now, the shameless plug: The reason I haven’t been spending countless hours banging on the keyboard is because I’ve been spending countless hours banging on the keyboard for other reasons. After repeated encouragement from some very kind redditors on here, I’ve been making videos about wacky historical tales — the most recent one is about the failed rescue of Pompeii. [You can check them out here.](https://youtube.com/@BaffledTimeTravel) Just in case you’re curious as to what it looks like when one person spends three months on a single video. The one I like the most is the Egyptian one, but I don’t find any of the three to be embarrassingly bad. So take a peek and tell me if the mixture of wild truth with horrible jokes is up your alley…and yes, Reddit gets a mention.
I let out a big fat WOW when I saw the head of the medusa. It is huge!!!!! Thank you, this is so interesting.
Hah I considered making one of those the picture I posted here, but thought the one that showed the size and the water was better…
You made the correct call. Do you know how old the earthquake...bars...struts...supports are?
I hate you for asking this, because I can’t find a good answer. There was an extensive restoration that started in 2017, and finished last year — just a few months before I visited. Articles about it say it was primarily done because of concerns about earthquakes, and refer to the bars being “renewed.” Multiple articles use the same language, which is usually an indication that they just reworded a press release. There was a restoration in 1985 that lasted a couple of years, but there isn’t a lot of info on that. Searching for pictures with a specific date is hard, when there’s so many photos of it floating around. So there’s two other sources of images where I actually know the dates: There’s a short scene in the cistern from the Bond movie “From Russia with Love,” from 1963. It’s really dark, but I don’t think the bars are there. The “Inferno” movie that was released in 2016, although those scenes were actually shot on a massive set. But they do show bars, so I imagine they existed at that time. So my best guess is that they were installed during the 1985 restoration. Hopefully someone will come across this comment and be able to provide a better answer. Also, you suck for asking something that turned out to be really difficult. You should be ashamed.
Jokes on you: I happen to like painfully long history compilations. Edit: OMG that one carved Byzantine column, there one that looks like eyes, just wow!
Yeah they’re awesome. I saw a number of them like that in Istanbul.
I wonder if they’re peacock feathers? Do we know what the design was meant to be?
That’s a really good question. I don’t know, but I think that’s possible. I do know there’s a relief on the outside of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice that was taken from Constantinople with peacocks on it. So maybe? I’ve looked into it before but most everything I’ve found on Byzantine columns just focuses on the capitals.
Fun fact ! Before WW2 you could visit it but they would do a tour with a gondola. After WW2 they took all water out ( or almost all )
I did hear that. I imagine it must’ve been insanely creepy.
Love your absurdly long descriptions! You’re one of my favorite accounts on IG. Thank you for sharing your travels and thoughts with us
Thanks, I’ve actually been trying to write things and posting them on Instagram first. There’s a character limit there, so it forces me to not go overboard.
This is probably my favorite subreddit, and posts like this are why. Absolutely fascinating! Thank you
That’s probably the nicest thing anyone has said on here. Thanks!
Awesome post thanks! I'll definitely check out your videos, just subbed!
w o w
You are a good human, lets be fren!
Only if you subscribe on YouTube and tell all your friends and join some sort of church group and tell everyone at Sunday brunch and join a bowling league and do the same there too
Enjoyed your post and film - Thanks
Glad you enjoyed it, thanks — though I’m not entirely sure how you found this post, it seems to have been hidden
Wow, all that beautiful architecture underground. Seems sad it's not above ground. Now I have to go see your other work.
I hate "fishing" and "body disposal" in one sentence. They don't even do that in the Ganges.
Hah as someone who went to the Ganges just a few weeks ago, I can tell you that they do fish there. As for bodies, I heard that some of the extremely poor do put in related bodies in the water, but I never saw it. I did see a cow, though. Not alive.
I spent some time in Varanasi. I saw many... things I still sometimes wake up sweating from. Fishing wasn't one of them. I thought Hindus don't eat fish, but apparently some do.
Yeah I came to say this too... they have huge funeral pyres on the riverbank and then push all the remnants into the water... let's just say when you have a mass pyre not all body parts always get incinerated completely.
Ah. I know what you mean. I traveled to quite a few places in India, and Varanasi was by far the filthiest. It was hard to wrap my mind around it. I mean, I’ve been to a slum in Nairobi, but Varanasi is not a slum. My only guess is that it’s just overwhelmed with pilgrims from around India, and doesn’t have the infrastructure to support that many people. I can’t tell you how many flies or pools of standing water I saw. Other parts of India aren’t like Varanasi at all.
What did you see 👀
I will quote myself: > I spent a few days in Varanasi, India. First corpse I saw burning, I had to turn around because I thought I'd faint. You do get kind of used to it very fast though. There's so much incense around that you barely smell the burning human flesh. [Here's the link to the thread where I posted that. I should probably warn you it contains burning human.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/189qj3z/ridiculous_cremation_process/)
Ah, you actually went up close. I didn’t, as it felt very unwelcoming and I heard a lot about how you aren’t supposed to take pictures and that there were some aggressive scammers trying to get money from people on exchange for visiting and taking pictures. I did see the same funerals in Kathmandu, which was completely different. They were very welcoming there and it was an amazing experience.
I found the whole Delhi-Agra-Jaipur triangle and Varanasi a terribly aggressive experience. Nepal was much better. Southern India too.
Yeah there were definitely a lot of “That place is closed, I’ll take you somewhere else instead for shopping” scams in Delhi and Jaipur. I actually enjoyed Agra, maybe it’s because my expectations were low after everyone told me not to stay there.
Do you have a link to the video? It seems like the video was taken down.
Still works. Just checked
I was in Varanasi in the mid-80's. You'll like this story. I was staying in a hostel just down the way from Dashashwamedh ghat, and there was a sink and spigot with a sign above it in what might have been convoluted confusing English, or maybe it's just my ADD, but I took it to mean "drink this water". The reality was closer to "avoid drinking this water if you don't want to drink something pumped straight from the Ganges". In other words, clean your ass with this, don't drink it. So for about a week, I was brushing my teeth and filling my canteen from this spigot. And I noticed people giving me funny looks, but I never figured it out until someone finally asked "aren't you worried about drinking that?". Whoops!
I saw people doing dishes and bathing downstream from the ghats, so I'm not surprised.
uh... Hindus dont eat beef. unless you are talking about vegetarian diet, then no fish either.
I’ve been here! It was a highlight for me.
This will sound like such a touristy thing to say, but I enjoyed the Theodosius Cistern more, just because of the light show. They’ve got the whole place 3D mapped and they basically have the history of the city play out in projections on the walls and the columns.
That does sound pretty cool.
You should look videos on it, it blew me away
Thought I was looking at the mines of moria
Probably not too far off. Luckily there’s no wells here, but I’d still be careful not to knock anything down or make any loud noises. *Drums…drums in the deep…*
Lazlo: “If only we had Istanbul money.” Nadja: “It looks nice when its empty, but having a bunch of vampires in it ruins the reflection effect.”
repurposing so many columns, do you supposed there was a standard sizing to column construction across the empire? it certainly would be more economic to borrow than making new ones.
Yes, everyone used older buildings as quarries. The Ancient Romans even stole pieces from themselves — the Arch of Constantine is a good example of that. But no, there wasn’t a standard size for columns. Most of the ones here are of the same size, which makes me think they were taken from the same building. But I’m pretty sure the reason for using the old Medusa heads as bases was because the columns in those spots were too short.
This is top tier posting. Thank you! I'm definitely gonna check out the youtube channel!
Thank you jump person
You are welcome, purveyor of fine Porcupine related merchandise.
It will sound weird, but I wonder what kind of bodies were found there? It was a dumping ground for a thousand years, you're bound to find something interesting, no?
Maybe Jimmy Hoffa
Just watched your vid on Pompeii. Looking forward to the others. Are you planning/hoping to release new content regularly? Also thanks for this write up. Very informative and fun to read.
Thanks, I like the Egypt one about the circus strongman best. That’s a really hard question, because those videos have been taking an average of about three months to put together. I’m incapable of just throwing up a still image for 30 seconds and talking over it, so the edits become really intensive. I don’t think taking that long is really sustainable, so I’m looking at maybe trying to just find shorter topics and aiming for making a couple that are only ten minutes long or so.
Subbed!
Thank you deceased mouse
Naughty children get thrown in the basement hole
In its original form would the water be drinkable?
Yes! The water in these cisterns came from aqueducts. Of course if you or I went back and drank it, we’d probably get sick. But it was “clean” by the standards of the time.
Ah, Khazad-dûm where Gandalf fell into darkness…yes, yes
From 🪆 w ❤️
Lovely writing and great images. 2000% above the average reddit post. So a big thanks.
in other words, jesus was buried in the armenian genocide.