The Hippodrome of Constantinople: what to see in Sultanahmet Square

Laid out

About 203 AD by Septimius Severus; enlarged by Constantine from 324

Capacity

Estimated tens of thousands of spectators

Cost

Free — it is an open public square

Don't miss

The Egyptian Obelisk, the Serpent Column, the Walled Obelisk, the German Fountain

Time needed

20–30 minutes

Best paired with

The Blue Mosque, which stands directly beside it

A stadium hiding in plain sight

Septimius Severus laid out a hippodrome here around 203 AD, and when Constantine refounded the city as his new capital in 324 he vastly enlarged it. Chariots raced anticlockwise around a central spine, the spina, and the long gentle curve of today's park still traces the shape of the track. At the southern end, the ground drops away sharply — the stadium was built out on massive substructures, some of which survive beneath the modern street.

Almost nothing above ground is left of the seating. What survives is the spine, and the monuments that stood along it.

The Blues, the Greens, and the riot that rebuilt the city

Chariot racing in Constantinople was never only sport. The crowd divided into factions — the Blues and the Greens — and those factions were political machines with money, muscle and opinions about who should be emperor. The Hippodrome was the one place where the population could shout at their ruler to his face, and emperors attended partly because they had to.

In January 532 the two factions did something unprecedented: they united. What began as a protest in the stands became the Nika riots, five days that burned half of Constantinople and came within an hour of toppling Justinian, who had his ships loaded and was ready to flee until the Empress Theodora reportedly told him that purple made a fine burial shroud. He stayed, sent troops into the Hippodrome, and the sources describe tens of thousands dead on this ground.

Then he rebuilt. Hagia Sophia, five minutes' walk from here, exists in its present form as a direct consequence of that riot — the previous church having burned in it.

The four monuments, north to south

The German Fountain

The ornate domed fountain at the northern end is by far the youngest thing here — a gift from Kaiser Wilhelm II, installed in 1900 to mark his visit and to cement a German-Ottoman friendship that would carry both empires into the First World War. Neo-Byzantine, gold-mosaic ceiling, and rather lovely.

The Obelisk of Theodosius

The pink granite obelisk is the oldest object standing anywhere in Istanbul by a very long margin. It was carved for Pharaoh Thutmose III around 1500 BC and stood at Karnak in Egypt for nearly two thousand years before Theodosius I had it shipped here and raised in 390 AD. The hieroglyphs are still so crisp they look machined. Look at the marble base, which is Roman rather than Egyptian and shows Theodosius and his court watching the races from the imperial box — a picture of this very place, in use.

The Serpent Column

The twisted bronze column is, historically, perhaps the most remarkable object in the square. It was cast from the melted-down weapons of the Persian army defeated at Plataea in 479 BC, and stood at Delphi for eight centuries as a Greek victory monument before Constantine brought it here. Three intertwined snakes originally supported a golden tripod; the heads are gone, though one survives in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum a short walk away.

The Walled Obelisk

At the southern end, a rough stone-built obelisk of uncertain date, once sheathed in gilded bronze plates. The plates are long gone, stripped — it is generally said — by soldiers of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the same sack that carried off the four bronze horses now associated with St Mark's in Venice.

Why this is the place a guide matters most

The Hippodrome is free, open at all hours, and takes twenty minutes. It is also the single site in Istanbul where the gap between what you can see and what is actually there is widest. Without the story, it is a park with three odd pillars. With it, you are standing in the arena where Byzantium roared, holding an Egyptian obelisk older than Rome and a Greek monument to a battle against Persia — all gathered here as trophies of an empire that thought of itself as the heir to everything.

On a private tailor-made Istanbul tour we usually walk the Hippodrome first thing, before the Blue Mosque beside it, because it sets up the entire history of the city in about twenty minutes and makes everything afterwards land harder.

The Hippodrome — frequently asked questions