The Hippodrome

The Hippodrome of Constantinople.

Circus Maximus Constantinopolitanus.

Those are the ancient names of what is now Sultanahmet Square in Istanbul.

And what a lovely place it is, a real cornucopia of faith and people, with a friendly and relaxed vibe.

Back in the day, it was the sporting and social centre of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. The word hippodrome comes of course from the Greek hippos for horse, and dromos for path way as horse and chariot racing were common in the ancient world and the remains of hippodromes can be found in  cities all over the Roman, Hellenistic, and Byzantine periods.

This Hippodrome was built when it was Byzantium, in AD 203. Then in AD 324, the Emperor Constantine the Great decided to rename it Nova Roma but nobody liked that so they called it  Constantinople, the City of Constantine.

 The hippodrome was 450 m long and 130 m wide, and could hold 100 000 people. I think we have all seen Ben Hur enough to know how the action played out. In Istanbul's hippodrome, the central part, the spina is still easily recognisable with many of the monuments and structures still in place.

The stands held 100,000 spectators.

My other half often quotes statistics about the violence between the fans at these ancient games. Rangers and Celtic have nothing compared to the rivalry between the teams, and their fans, in the Byzantine period. People would bet large amounts of money on the chariot races. Four teams took part, each team had two chariots, each pulled by four horses. Each team was sponsored and supported by a different political party.

The one quoted to me most often is the story of the riot that broke out between supporters of the Blues and supporters of the Greens in Nika  in 532. That escalated to civil war in which an estimated 30,000 people were killed. The Hagia Sophia was destroyed in that riot, resulting the building that stands there today.

 Carceres is name for the place were the animals were kept before release, and above the carceres in the Hippodrome was the gilded copper statues of four horses, The Horses of Saint Mark.  I know that Dan Brown has his theories but the ancestry, Greek or Roman, of these horses has never exactly been determined. According to Wikipedia ( and maybe Dan Brown!) they were stolen at the time of the Fourth Crusade (1204) and are now  on the wall of St Mark's Basilica in Venice.

Here's a quick walk round the Hippodrome as it is today.

                                                     The German Fountain, Gifted from Kaiser Wilhelm.

                                                                        The Blue Mosque

Hagia Sophia

And a street of old buildings, in wood. They reminded me very much of Nantucket!