U.K.’s
Daily Mail reported, “The atmospheric and cavernous underground
Basilica Cistern is a well-known tourist attraction in Istanbul.
Famously
used as a backdrop in James
Bond movieFrom Russia with Love, the 6th century cistern
provided a fresh water supply for buildings including the Emperor's
palace”.
A
newly opened exhibition called 'Waters for aCapital'
at the RCAC Gallery in Istanbul exhibits photographs and computer
graphics of findings by British archaeologists, working with
Turkish scientists.
Visitors
will be able to travel through tunnels and zoom over bridges. There
will also be plans to explore and videos to
watch.
The
spectacular remains, mostly hidden in suburban forests or beneath the
city, are still largely unknown, despite being among the most
extensive of their kind and the most impressive to survive from the
Roman era.
The
system carried fresh water around 400km from springs outside the city
into the heart of
the metropolis created in the name of Roman emperor
Constantine in 330AD. Later on, it became the new Rome.
Professor
Crow, based in the
University of
Edinburgh's school of
history, classics and archaeology, quoted Daily Mail, “'In Istanbul
itself there are lots of old cisterns where people stored water. Some
of them were very big but people have never really understood how the
water got to them and the scale of the enterprise to try and achieve
that. This exhibition highlights some exceptional ancient monuments
that are part of the fabric of Istanbul, yet still relatively unknown
to many of its inhabitants.”
Source: Daily Mail
Source: Daily Mail
