Basilica Cistern
Three hundred and thirty-six columns sunk beneath the city, and two Medusa heads set upside down.
Duration
45 min – 1 hr
Best time
At opening
Open
Every day
Entry price
38 EUR
The cistern was dug under Justinian around 532 to supply the Great Palace: seventy-eight metres by a hundred and forty, three hundred and thirty-six nine-metre columns, able to hold eighty thousand cubic metres of water. The columns came from dismantled temples, which is why no two match.
Two blocks carved with Medusa heads serve as bases in the north-west corner, one on its side, the other upside down. Nobody knows why: convenient reuse, or an intent to neutralise the petrifying gaze. The former is the likelier explanation.
Getting there
A hundred and fifty metres from Hagia Sophia; the entrance is a small building on Alemdar Caddesi. Tram T1, Sultanahmet stop.
What the price covers
foreign visitor entry
What to bring
- Walking shoes
- 1.5 L of water
- Cap
Rules on site
The entrance is narrow and the queue forms outside with no shade: the timed ticket is bought online. It is damp and cool below, and the walkways are slippery.
Checked on 28 August 2026 at The Istanbul Insider — entrance fees 2026
Other places in Istanbul
Blue MosqueSix minarets and twenty thousand Iznik tiles, still in use as a place of worship.
Hagia SophiaByzantine basilica, then mosque, then museum, then mosque again: fifteen hundred years of history under one dome.
Topkapi PalaceFour centuries of Ottoman sultans, their treasury and their harem, on the headland above the Bosphorus.