Hagia Sophia: 1500 Years of Empires

Stand in the middle of what's left of the hippodrome. This was the center of public life in Constantinople. Built in 203 AD by Emperor Septimius Severus. Expanded by Constantine I in the fourth century. It held a hundred thousand people. This was where the chariot races happened that drove the city mad. But the races were secondary. The hippodrome was where the people and the emperor came face to face. And where emperors could fall. In 532, during Justinian's reign, the Nika Revolt broke out. Fans of two racing factions, the Blues and the Greens, united to attack the government. They b…

Look at the obelisk and the column beside you. The pink granite obelisk was brought by Emperor Theodosius I from Egypt in 390 AD. It belonged to Pharaoh Thutmose III. From 1450 BC. It's nearly three thousand five hundred years old, and it's still standing in the exact spot the Romans placed it. But the column next to it has an even stranger story. It's the Serpent Column. The Greeks made it in 479 BC, to celebrate the victory over the Persians at Plataea. Cast from the bronze of the defeated Persian army's shields. For eight hundred years it stood at Delphi, in the sanctuary of Apollo. …

Across the square from Hagia Sophia stands the Blue Mosque. It gets its name from the more than twenty thousand blue Iznik ceramic tiles that cover the interior. Sultan Ahmed I built it between 1609 and 1616. And there's an architectural scandal behind it. Ottoman imperial mosques had four minarets. Only the sultan could build one with more. Ahmed I gave his six. The ulema, the religious leaders, protested furiously. Six minarets was the number at the Great Mosque of Mecca. No one could equal the Mosque of God. Ahmed I had to pay to build a seventh minaret at Mecca to settle the contro…

Walk in. Stay near the entrance and look up. The central dome is fifty-six meters high and thirty-one meters in diameter. At its base are forty windows that create the illusion it's floating. The historian Procopius, who saw it freshly completed in 537 AD, wrote that it seemed "suspended from heaven by a golden chain." It was built in five years and ten months. With ten thousand workers, a hundred foremen. The lead architect, Isidore of Miletus, wasn't a trained architect. He was a mathematician and physicist. That explains the dome. For nine centuries it was the largest cathedral in th…

Walk toward Topkapi Palace. For four hundred years, this was the center of government of the Ottoman Empire. The sultan lived, ruled, judged, and died here. At its greatest extent, the Ottoman Empire controlled three continents: Eastern Europe, North Africa, and all of the Middle East. All from here. But the most fascinating part of the palace isn't the throne rooms. It's the Harem. The Harem wasn't just the space for the sultan's wives. It was the real center of political power in the Empire. The mothers of sultans, called Valide Sultan, controlled access to the sultan. They decided who…

Walk into the Grand Bazaar. More than four thousand shops. Sixty covered streets. Built by the Ottomans in 1461, just eight years after taking Constantinople. It's the oldest covered market in the world that still operates. It has operated continuously for five hundred and sixty years. It has survived twelve earthquakes. Fires. The fall of the Ottoman Empire, the creation of modern Turkey, two world wars, a global pandemic. It always opened the next day. There's something the Grand Bazaar teaches about how commerce actually works. The price on the label is not the price. Bargaining isn…

We've reached the Galata Bridge. It connects the historic district to the north shore of the Golden Horn. Underneath are restaurants. On top, fishermen casting lines from morning to night. There's something the Galata Bridge shows about Istanbul that you can't see anywhere else in the city. If you stand in the middle and look east, you see the minaret of the Süleymaniye Mosque and the dome of Hagia Sophia. If you turn west, you see the modern neighborhoods of Beyoğlu with nineteenth-century buildings and fashionable bars. Same bridge. Two worlds. Istanbul has always been that: the place…

Climb the Galata Tower. The Genoese built it in 1348. Galata was their trading colony in Constantinople, separated from the Greek city by the Golden Horn. The Genoese paid taxes to the Byzantine Empire. In return, they had a monopoly on trade in the Black Sea. In practice, they were the Empire's financial system. When the Turks took Constantinople in 1453, the Genoese district didn't resist. It surrendered without a fight. Mehmed II, rather than looting them, let them stay. He needed them to keep controlling trade. Real power doesn't always destroy those who can be useful. From the top …