Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
seems to have stood at first in the courtyard of Haghia Sophia and
to have been moved to the Hippodrome only at a later date. There
are several stories about what became of the missing serpent heads,
but the most likely one is that they were chopped of by a member of
the Polish Embassy one night in April of the year 1700. The upper
part of one of the serpent heads was found in 1847 and is now, as
we have seen, on exhibit at the Archaeological Museum. Like the
serpents themselves, it is a very beautiful and finished piece of bronze
sculpture, as is to be expected of a Greek work of that period.
The third of the ancient monuments on the spina is a roughly built
pillar of stone 32 metres high which stands near the southern end
of the At Meydanı. The sixteenth-century French traveller, Gyllius,
called it the Colossus, but most modern writers refer to it, incorrectly,
as the Column of Constantine Porphryogenitus. Both names stem
from the Greek inscription on its base, where the pillar is compared
to the Colossus of Rhodes, and where it is recorded that the pillar
was restored and sheathed in bronze by the Emperor Constantine VII
Porphyrogenitus (r. 912-59). But the inscription also says that the
pillar was decayed by time, so that it must date to an earlier period,
perhaps to that of Theodosius the Great or Constantine the Great.
It seems to have been a favourite pastime in the early Turkish period
to climb this column as an acrobatic feat - at least if one can judge
by a Turkish miniature which shows a man at the top of it, another
in the act of climbing the obelisk, and a monkey on a pole higher
than both! And Gyllius tells a rather grim story of having, himself,
seen two young men climb the pillar one after the other; the first
came down safely but the second lost his nerve, jumped, and was, of
course, instantly killed.
PALACE OF IBRAHİM PAŞA
Occupying a large part of the west side of the Hippodrome, but partly
concealed by an ugly nineteenth-century building, are the remains of
the vast palace of Ibrahim Paşa, built around 1520. Ibrahim Paşa
was a Greek convert to Islam who became an intimate companion
of Süleyman the Magnificent during the early years of his reign. In
1523, Ibrahim was appointed Grand Vezir and the following year
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