07/02/2024 By Kane Khanh
When Istanbul was Constantinople during the period of the great Roman, and later Byzantium Empire, hundreds of subterranean cisterns were built underneath the streets and houses to store water. The largest and the grandest of them all is the Basilica Cistern, so called because it lay beneath the Stoa Basilica, a large Byzantine public square. This impressive structure with more than three hundred vaulted columns topped with Corinthian or Doric capitals appears like a palace, earning the cistern its modern nickname of the “Sunken Palace”. Locally, it’s known as Yerebatan Sarnıcı, Turkish for “underground cistern”.