An arena nearly half a kilometer long, packed with 100,000 howling fans. The emperor seated along with his family in the imperial loge, disinterestedly following the proceedings. Hundreds of golden statues, columns, monuments and treasures decorating the track. And the thunderous sound of 32 horses, galloping maniacally under the whip’s cruel crack. Oh, to travel back in time and experience the Hippodrome during the Golden Age of Constantinople!
Little remains of this once great public arena. The Hippodrome, built in the 3rd century, had already fallen into disrepair by the time the Ottomans claimed the city in 1453, and the new rulers of Istanbul had little use for chariot racing. But the arena’s general shape has survived in the form of Sultanahmet Square, including one magnificent chunk of its retaining wall on the southeast. So it’s not difficult to get a sense of its former size.
Of the many monuments which once made up the track’s spine, only three remain. Coming from the south, the first of these is the Walled Obelisk: 32-meters in height and with the modern appearance of a mid-game Jenga tower. It had been covered in gilded bronze until the Fourth Crusade, when Europe’s Christian soldiers decided to end their “holy quest” by sacking their Christian brothers in Constantinople, instead of continuing on to Jerusalem. By the time they were done looting, the Crusaders had stripped the Walled Obelisk bare and left the city in a ruinous state that it never recovered from.
Meters away from the Walled Obelisk is the Serpentine Column: a strange spiral of weathered bronze. There had originally been three snake heads atop the column, which was taken from Delphi at the command of Constantine the Great. This column, simple as it might look, is one of humanity’s oldest Greek treasures, crafted in 478 BC as an offering to Apollo following the legendary Battle of Plataea, in which an over-matched alliance of Greek states defeated the powerful Persians of Xerxes I. The column’s snake heads were lopped off sometime during the Ottoman regency of Istanbul, but one can still be seen in the city’s Museum of Archaeology.
The Serpentine column’s age is impressive, but the Hippodrome’s third monument is even older. A lot older. The Egyptian Obelisk was originally erected in Luxor sometime around 1450 BC. That’s about three and a half millennia ago. Give or take a century. Made of red granite, it’s in unfathomably good condition, despite being moved to Constantinople by Theodosius in 390 AD and re-erected in the center of the Hippodrome.
Covered in mysterious Egyptian hieroglyphs and supported by a base which recounts the obelisk’s re-staging in Constantinople, the obelisk definitely holds a strange kind of power. It’s inconceivable how perfectly upheld it’s remained; whether this is down to the hard red granite or its mystical properties (which some people truly believe in)… well, that’s not for me to say. But it’s hard to remain unmoved while in the obelisk’s presence.
Location of the Hippodrome on our Map
