Basilica Cistern — Yerebatan Sarnıcı

Welcome to the Basilica Cistern, known to locals as Yerebatan Sarnıcı, or the Sunken Palace. As you descend these fifty-two stone steps, you are entering a subterranean world that has anchored Istanbul for nearly one thousand five hundred years. Commissioned by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian the First in five hundred thirty-two AD, this cathedral-sized reservoir was built to provide a reliable water supply to the Great Palace of Constantinople and its surrounding inhabitants. Before you move deeper into the space, look up and take in the sheer scale. This hall spans about one hundred forty meters in length and seventy meters in width, an engineering feat that once held eighty thousand cubic meters of water. You might even notice a faint echo in the air—a reminder of the silence this space held while it was forgotten for centuries under the city streets until its rediscovery in the mid-sixteenth century.