Istanbul Day 2 - Hippodrome

Part I - Hippodrome

As you can see from my titles we saw A LOT today.  We started the morning off at the Hippodrome.  Here once stood the heart of the Byzantine city of Constantinople.  It was originally laid out by Emperor Septimus Severus during his rebuilding of the city in the 3rd century AD.  It is thought that the stadium held up to 100,000 people but there is little left of what once stood.  Now the site is an elongated public garden and the only original fixture left is what was once the chariot track, now paved over and used as a road.  Constantine enlarged the Hippodrome and adorned the "spina," the central line of the stadium, with obelisks and columns from Ancient Egypt and Greece, importing a sense of history to his new capital.  Three of these adornments still stand including two that you see in the above picture.  Here you see the Egyptian Obelisk, which was built in 1500 BC, and which once stood outside Luxor until Constantine had it brought to his city.  It is obviously shortened and sits on four bronze stands to protect it from earthquakes.  These bronze blocks sit atop a marble base made in the 4th century AD showing Theodosius I and his family in the "kathisma" watching various events, including one of the erection of the obelisk itself.  The other obelisk you see in the picture in the distance is the Column of Constantine Porphyrogenitus.  It is thought to have once been sheathed in a case of bronze.  The third column not in the picture is the Serpentine Column, believed to date from 479 BC, which was shipped here from Delphi where it once stood.  It is missing it's top ornament of gold serpents.  The heads of the serpents were knocked off in the 18th century by a drunken Polish nobleman.  The Hippodrome was the scene of one of the bloodiest events in Istanbul's history.  In 532 a brawl between rival chariot-racing teams developed into the Nika Revolt, during which much of the city was destroyed, specifically the Hagia Sophia.  The end of the revolt came when an army of mercenaries, under the command of Justinian's general Belisarius, massacred an estimated 30,000 people trapped in the Hippodrome.

As we were standing in the middle of the park listening to Zafer tell about the history of the place we hear what sounds like a band in the distance.  We weren't sure if it was live or not and then we see in the distance a marching band coming down the street.  My dad immediately takes off running after them with his video camera held up high.  We are hardly misjudged as locals in this country.  The band ended up coming right down the street in front of us and as you can see in the picture they were dressed in traditional Turkish ceremonial dress followed by young children and then students.  Zafer said this march was customarily done to encourage the troops to go into battle.  My favorite part were the fake mustaches they wore.  Later on we saw the young kids doing typical Turkish dances in front of the Hagia Sophia dressed in their little Turkish outfits.  My dad got some good video of that as well :-).