h The Palazzo Pitti The original central section of this palace was constructed in 1458 by Luca Fancelli, working from a design by Brunelleschi. It was built for an extremely wealthy Florentine banker, Luca Pitti, who intended it to be the grandest building in Florence, one that would outshine that of his rivals, the Medici. However, Luca Pitti died prematurely, and after some financial setbacks, his heirs were forced to sell it. In 1549, it was bought by the wife of Cosimo I, Eleonora di Toledo, who commissioned Ammannati to enlarge it. He lengthened the facade and build a splendid courtyard inside. Tribolo transformed the hill behind the palace into the most beautiful Italian garden of them all: Boboli.
In 1620, the facade of the palace was once again amplified by the architect Giulio Parigi, and the two side wings were added in the 18th and early 19th centuries. For three centuries it was the residence of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, and during the Napoleonic period it was occupied by the Queen of Etruria, Napoleon's sister Elisa Baciocchi. Following the unification of Italy, it became the residence of the Savoy royal family. Today it is the property of the state.
h Battaglia di Marciano della Chiana of Giorgio Vasari’s in the Hall of the Five Hundred (palazzo Vecchio).
h The Isolotto - sculpture of Perseus on a half-submerged horse bounding through the water
h La Cerchiata – one of Florence’s most peaceful spots
h The Fountain of Neptune designed by Stoldo Lorenzi (1534-83) for Cosimo I (1519-74) 1565-68 (bronze) clutching his three-pronged trident.
h Braccio di Bartolo – court dwarf (Boboli Gardens) 
h Ponte alle Grazie - is a bridge over the Arno River in Florence, Italy. The original Ponte alle Grazie was constructed in 1227. It was rebuilt in 1345 with nine arches, making it the oldest and longest bridge in Florence. In August 1944, the bridge was destroyed by the retreating Germans. The winning design, the work of a group formed of architects including Giovanni Michelucci, Edoardo Said, Edoardo Detti, Riccardo Gizdolich and Danilo Know and an engineer, Piero Melucci, feature four slender piers with thin arches between them. The new bridge was completed in 1953. While the new design is harmonious with the surrounding city, its modern design and construction materials do not reflect its predecessor.
h Ponte Vecchio – pedestrian bridge connecting the Pitti Palace to the old city. (is an original old structure)
h the Buontalenti Grotto – intended as a fun house for young guests at the Pitti Palace, the three-chambered suite of caverns was decoarted in a blend of naturalistic fantasy and Gothic excess, composed of what appeared to be dripping concretions and flowing pumice that seemed either to be consuming or exuding the multitude of carved figures.
h Four unfinished Prisoners of Michelangelo - These unfinished figures seem to be fighting to free themselves from the stone. Michelangelo believed the sculptor was a tool of God, not creating but simply revealing the powerful and beautiful figures he put in the marble. Michelangelo’s job was to chip away the excess, to reveal.
h Il Corridoio Vasariano – the Vasari Corridor – was designed by Giorgio Vasari in 1564 under orders of the Mediciruler, Grand Duke Cosimo I, to provide safe passage from hias residence to his administrative offices, across the Arno River in the Palazzo Vecchio. It stretched nearly a full kilometer from the eastern corner of the Boboli Gardens to the heart of the old palace itself, crossing the Ponte Vecchio and snaking through the Uffizi Gallery
h Loggia dei Lanzi
h Uffizi Gallery (Italian: Galleria degli Uffizi) is one of the main museums in Florence, and among the oldest and most famous art museums of Europe. The building of Uffizi was begun by Giorgio Vasari in 1560 for Cosimo I de' Medici so as to accommodate the offices of the Florentine magistrates, hence the name uffizi, "offices". The construction was later continued by Alfonso Parigi and Bernardo Buontalenti and completed in 1581.
h Ammannati’s Neptune was commissioned on the occasion of the wedding of Francesco I de' Medici with Johanna of Austria in 1565. The Neptune figure, whose face resembles that of Cosimo I de' Medici, was meant to be an allusion to the dominion of the Florentines over the sea. The figure stands on a high pedestal in the middle of an octagonal fountain. The pedestal in the middle is decorated with the mythical chained figures of Scylla (greek mythology: was a monster that lived on one side of a narrow channel of water, opposite its counterpart…) Charybdis (was a sea monster, later rationalised as a whirlpool and considered a shipping hazard in the Strait of Messina).
h Hercules and Cacus (Cacus was a fire-breathing giant and the son of Vulcan. He was killed by Hercules after terrorizing the Palatine Hill before the founding of Rome) is a white sculpture to the right of the entrance of the Palazzo Vecchio in the Piazza della Signoria, Florence, Italy. This work by the Florentine artist Baccio Bandinelli (1525–1534) was commissioned as a pendant to David, which had been commissioned by the republican counsel of Florence, under Piero Soderini (gonfaloniere for life), to commemorate the victory over the Medici.
h Medici lions – pair of lions, one of ancient origin 2nd century, the other from 16th century made by Vacca. both were by 1598 placed at the Villa Medici, Rome, and since 1789 have been displayed at the Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence. A pair of lions were required by Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who had acquired the Villa Medici in 1576, to serve as majestic ornaments for the villa's garden staircase, the Loggia dei leoni.
h The Studiolo was a small painting-encrusted barrel-vaulted room in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, commissioned by Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. It was completed for the duke from 1570-1572, by teams of artists under the supervision of Giorgio Vasari and the scholars Giovanni Batista Adriani and Vincenzo Borghini. This small room was part-office, part-laboratory, part-hiding place, and part-cabinet of curiosities. Here the prince tinkered with alchemy and fingered his collection of small, precious, unusual or rare objects, under the organizing vista of thematic canvases, which are rather larger than most cabinet paintings.
h For the Love of God -is a sculpture by artist Damien Hirst produced in 2007. It consists of a platinum cast of an 18th-century human skull encrusted with 8,601 flawless diamonds, including a pear-shaped pink diamond located in the forehead that is known as the Skull Star Diamond. The skull's teeth are original, and were purchased by Hirst in London. The artwork is a Memento mori, or reminder of the mortality of the viewer. In 2007, art historian Rudi Fuchs, observed: 'The skull is out of this world, celestial almost. It proclaims victory over decay. At the same time it represents death as something infinitely more relentless. Compared to the tearful sadness of a vanitas scene, the diamond skull is glory itself. Costing £14 million to produce, the work was placed on its inaugural display at the White Cube gallery in London in an exhibition Beyond belief with an asking price of £50 million. This would have been the highest price ever paid for a single work by a living artist.
h La Mappa Mundi globe in the Hall of Maps
h Palazzo Invisible – the clandestine world that existed behind the walls of Palazzo Vecchio – a secret domain that had been accessible solely to then-reigning duke and those closest to him.
h The Apotheosis of Cosimo I – Vasari’s most precious painting – the central lunette in the entire Hall of th
h e Five Hundred.
h The Duke of Athens Stairway
h Cornetti are crescent-shaped pastries (the word corno means horn, as in cow's
horn), while brioches are round
h The Doomsday Clock is a universally-recognized symbolic clock face, representing a countdown to possible political related global catastrophe (nuclear war or climate change)
h The Bargello, also known as the Bargello Palace, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, or Palazzo del Popolo (Palace of the People) is a former barracks and prison, now an art museum, in Florence, Italy.
h The Badia Fiorentina is an abbey and church now home to the Fraternity of Jerusalem situated on the Via del Proconsolo in the centre of Florence, Italy. Dante supposedly grew up across the street in what is now called the 'Casa di Dante', rebuilt in 1910 as a museum to Dante (though in reality unlikely to be his real home). He would have heard the monks singing the Mass and the Offices here in Latin Gregorian chant, as he famously recounts in his Commedia: "Florence, within her ancient walls embraced, Whence nones and terce still ring to all the town, Abode aforetime, peaceful, temperate, chaste." The abbey was founded in 978 as a Benedectine monastery for monks by Willa, the mother of Ugo di Toscana (patron of the Abbey where he was buried) who endowed it with farms and houses.
h The Casa di Dante The building in the small Piazza Santa Margherita that is today called Dante's house is nothing other than an arbitrary reconstruction, carried out around 1900, of one of the houses belonging to the Alighieri family. It is, however, thought that one of the houses facing onto this piazza was the birthplace of Dante.The Casa di Dante houses the Museo di Dante, which includes a rich collection of various editions of The Divine Comedy and extensive geographic documentation of Dante's Florence
h The Casa di Santa Margherita de' Cerchi - is an ancient church dedicated to Margaret the Virgin in the centre of Florence, Italy. It is first recorded in 1032 and is said, contentiously, to have been the location of Dante's marriage to Gemma Donati in 1285 or 1290. It was certainly the Donati family's parish church and also contains several tombs of the Portinari family, to which Dante's great love Beatrice Portinari belonged, including Monna Tessa, her nursemaid. The church contains a fine altarpiece of the Madonna and Four Saints by Neri di Bicci. Visitors may write letters to Beatrice to ask her to fix their love lives, leaving the letters in a basket next to her shrine.
h The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore - is the main church of Florence, Italy. Il Duomo di Firenze, as it is ordinarily called, was begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to the design of Arnolfo di Cambio and completed structurally in 1436 with the dome engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi. The exterior of the basilica is faced with polychrome marble panels in various shades of green and pink bordered by white and has an elaborate 19th-century Gothic Revival façade by Emilio De Fabris.
Had long provided not only spiritual heart to Florence but centuries of drama and intrigue. The building’s volatile past ranged from long and vicious debates over Vasari’s much-despised fresco of the Last Judgement on the dome’s interior… to the hotly disputed competition to select the architect to finish the dome itself.
Filippo Brunelleschi had eventually secured the lucrative contract and completed the dome – the largest of its kind at the time – and to this day Brunelleschi himself can be seen in sculpture, seated outside the Palazzo dei Canonici, starign contentedly up at his masterpiece.
h The Florence Baptistery (Italian: Battistero di San Giovanni), also known as the Baptistry of Saint John, is a religious building in Florence, Italy, and has the status of a minor basilica. The octagonal baptistery stands in both the Piazza del Duomo and the Piazza di San Giovanni, across from Florence Cathedral and the Campanile di Giotto
Adorned in the same polychromatic facing stones and striped pilasters as the catherdral, the baptistry distinguished itself from the lager building by its striking shape – a perfect octagon. Resembling a layer of cake, some had claimed, the eight-sided structure consisted of three distinct tiers that ascended to a shallow white roof.
h Giotto’s Campanile is a free-standing campanile that is part of the complex of buildings that make up Florence Cathedral on the Piazza del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Standing adjacent the Basilica of Santa Maria del Fiore and the Baptistery of St. John, the tower is one of the showpieces of the Florentine Gothic architecture with its design by Giotto, its rich sculptural decorations and the polychrome marble encrustations. This slender structure stands on a square plan with a side of 14.45 metres (47.41 ft). It attains a height of 84.7 metres (277.9 ft) sustained by four polygonal buttresses at the corners. These four vertical lines are crossed by four horizontal lines, dividing the tower in five levels.
Crafted in gilded bronze and over fifteen feet tall, the doors had taken Lorenzo Ghiberti more than twenty years to complete. They were adorned with ten intricate panels of delicate biblical figures of such quality that Giorgio Vasari had called the doors “undeniably perfect in every way and… the finest masterpiece ever created.”
It had been Michelangelo, however, whose gushing testimonial had provided the doors with a nickname that endured even today. Michelangelo had proclaimed them so beautiful as to be fit for use… as the Gates of Paradise.
h Boticelli’s Mappa
h Michelino predominantly painted scenes from the Bible. His most famous work can be found on the west wall of Florence's "Duomo" (cathedral) Santa Maria del Fiore, including La commedia illumina Firenze ("The Comedy Illuminating Florence"), showing Dante Alighieri and the Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy). Along with Dante and the city of Florence, the work depicts Hell, Mount Purgatory, the earthly Paradise (with Adam and Eve) and the celestial spheres.
Langton advanced slides until he reached an image he had shown earlier – the iconic Domenico di Michelino painting from inside the duomo, which depicted red-robed Dante standing outside walls of Florence.
The caduceus (☤) the staff carried by Hermes in Greek mythology. The same staff was also borne by heralds in general, for example by Iris, the messenger of Hera. It is a short staff entwined by two serpents, sometimes surmounted by wings. In Roman iconography it was often depicted being carried in the left hand of Mercury, the messenger of the gods, guide of the dead and protector of merchants, shepherds, gamblers, liars, and thieves.
By extension of its association with Mercury and Hermes, the caduceus is also a recognized symbol of commerce and negotiation, two realms in which balanced exchange and reciprocity are recognized as ideals. The caduceus is also used as a symbol representing printing, again by extension of the attributes of Mercury (in this case associated with writing and eloquence).
The caduceus is often used as a symbol of healthcare organisations and medical practice (especially in North America) due to confusion with the traditional medical symbol, the rod of Asclepius, which has only one snake and is never depicted with wings.
In Greek mythology, the Rod of Asclepius, also known as the asklepian, is a serpent-entwined rod wielded by the Greek god Asclepius, a deity associated with healing and medicine. The symbol has continued to be used in modern times, where it is associated with medicine and health care, yet frequently confused with the staff of the god Hermes, the caduceus. Theories have been proposed about the Greek origin of the symbol and its implications.
h The Doge's Palace (Italian: Palazzo Ducale) is a palace built in Venetian Gothic style, and one of the main landmarks of the city of Venice, northern Italy. The palace was the residence of the Doge of Venice, the supreme authority of the Republic of Venice, opening as a museum in 1923. Today, it is one of the 11 museums run by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia.
h The Patriarchal Cathedral Basilica of Saint Mark (officially known in Italian as the Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco and commonly known as Saint Mark's Basilica) is the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Venice, northern Italy. It is the most famous of the city's churches and one of the best known examples of Italo-Byzantine architecture. It lies at the eastern end of the Piazza San Marco, adjacent and connected to the Doge's Palace. Originally it was the chapel of the Doge, and has only been the city's cathedral since 1807, when it became the seat of the Patriarch of Venice, archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Venice, formerly at San Pietro di Castello.
For its opulent design, gold ground mosaics, and its status as a symbol of Venetian wealth and power, from the 11th century on the building has been known by the nickname Chiesa d'Oro (Church of gold).
“… Venice’s two most popular tourist attractions - the Dode’s Palace and St. Mark’s Basilica – were built by the doges, for the doges. Many of them are buried right here.”
h The Horses of Saint Mark, also known as the Triumphal Quadriga, is a set of bronze statues of four horses, originally part of a monument depicting a quadriga (a four-horse carriage used for chariot racing) The horses were placed on the facade, on the loggia above the porch, of St Mark's Basilica in Venice, northern Italy after the sack of Constantinople in 1204. They remained there until looted by Napoleon in 1797 but were returned in 1815. The sculptures have been removed from the facade and placed in the interior of St. Mark's for conservation purposes, with replicas in their position on the loggia.
h San Simeone Piccolo (also called San Simeone e Giuda) is a church in the sestiere of Santa Croce in Venice, northern Italy. From across the Grand Canal it faces the railroad terminal serving as entrypoint for most visitors to the city.
Built in 1718-38 by Giovanni Antonio Scalfarotto, the church shows the emerging eclecticism of Neoclassical architecture. It accumulates academic architectural quotations, much like the contemporaneous Karlskirche in Vienna. Wittkower in his monograph, acknowledges San Simeone is modeled on the Pantheon with a temple-front pronaos, on the other hand, the peaked dome recalls Longhena's more embellished and prominent Santa Maria della Salute church. The centralized circular church design and the metal dome recalls Byzantine models and San Marco, though the numerous centrifugal chapels are characteristic of Post-Tridentine churches.
h Transhumanism (abbreviated as H+ or h+) is an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations, as well as the ethics of developing and using such technologies. They speculate that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label "posthuman".
h Punta della Dogana is an art museum in Venice's old customs building, the Dogana da Mar. It also refers to the triangular area of Venice where the Grand Canal meets the Giudecca Canal, and its collection of buildings: Santa Maria della Salute, Patriarchal Seminary of Venice, and Dogana da Mar at the triangle's tip.
Overlooking this perilous intersectuon is the austerre triangular fortress of Dogana da Mar – the Maritime Customs Office – whose watchtower once guarded Venice against foreign invasion. Nowadays, the tower has been replaced by a massive golden globe and a weather vane depicting the goddess of fortune, whose shifting directions on the breeze serve as a reminder to ocen-bound sailors of the unpredictability of fate.
h A Bellini cocktail is a mixture of Prosecco sparkling wine and peach purée or nectar, originating in Venice, Italy.
Riva degli Schiavoni. The wide stone promenade that sat along water’s edge had been built in the ninth century from dredged silt and ran from the old Arsenal all the way to St. Mark’s Square.
Here, at the southernmost edge of St. Mark’s square, the vast expanse of pavement met the open sea. During Venice’s golden age, this stark precipice had been proudly dubbed “the edge of civilization”.
h The Bridge of Sighs (Italian: Ponte dei Sospiri) is a bridge located in Venice, northern Italy. The enclosed bridge is made of white limestone and has windows with stone bars. It passes over the Rio di Palazzo and connects the New Prison (Prigioni Nuove) to the interrogation rooms in the Doge's Palace. It was designed by Antonio Contino (whose uncle Antonio da Ponte had designed the Rialto Bridge) and was built in 1600.
The view from the Bridge of Sighs was the last view of Venice that convicts saw before their imprisonment. The bridge name, given by Lord Byron in the 19th century, comes from the suggestion that prisoners would sigh at their final view of beautiful Venice through the window before being taken down to their cells. In reality, the days of inquisitions and summary executions were over by the time the bridge was built and the cells under the palace roof were occupied mostly by small-time criminals. In addition, little could be seen from inside the Bridge due to the stone grills covering the windows.
A local legend says that lovers will be granted eternal love and bliss if they kiss on a gondola at sunset under the Bridge of Sighs as the bells of St Mark's Campanile toll.
h Murano is a series of islands linked by bridges in the Venetian Lagoon, northern Italy. It lies about 1.5 kilometres (0.9 miles) north of Venice and measures about 1.5 km (0.9 mi) across with a population of just over 5,000 (2004 figures).[1] It is famous for its glass making, particularly lampworking. It was once an independent comune, but is now a frazione of the comune of Venice.
h The Museo Correr is a museum in Venice, northern Italy. Located in St. Mark's Square, Venice, it is one of the 11 civic museums run by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia. The museum extends along the southside of the square on the upper floors of the Procuratorie Nuove. With its rich and varied collections, the Museo Correr covers both the art and history of Venice.
h The Clock Tower in Venice is an early renaissance building on the north side of the Piazza San Marco at the entrance to the Merceria. It comprises a tower, which contains the clock, and lower buildings on each side. It adjoins the eastern end of the Procuratie Vecchie. Both the tower and the clock date from the last decade of the 15th century, though the mechanism of the clock has subsequently been much altered. It was placed where the clock would be visible from the waters of the lagoon and give notice to every one of the wealth and glory of Venice. The lower two floors of the tower make a monumental archway into the main street of the city, the Merceria, which linked the political and religious centre (the Piazza) with the commercial and financial centre (the Rialto). Today it is one of the 11 venues managed by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia.
h 
The Portrait of the Four Tetrarchs is a porphyry sculpture group of four Roman emperors dating from around 300. Since the Middle Ages it has been fixed to a corner of the facade of St Mark's Basilica in Venice, Italy.
The Roman Empire was for a time after 293 ruled by a tetrarchy (a group of four rulers), instituted by Emperor Diocletian. The tetrarchy consisted of two Augusti (senior emperors) and two Caesars (younger emperors). The empire was territorially divided into western and eastern halves, with a senior and a junior emperor in each half. After Diocletian and his colleague, Maximian, retired in 305, internal strife erupted among the tetrarchs. The system finally ceased to exist around 313.
The Portrait of the Four Tetrarchs symbolizes the concept of the tetrarchy, rather than providing four personal portraits. Each tetrarch looks the same, without any individualized characteristics, except that two, probably representing the older Augusti, have beards, and two do not. The group is divided into pairs, each embracing, which unites Augusti and Caesars together. The overall effect suggests unity and stability. The very choice of material, the durable porphyry (which came from Egypt), symbolizes a permanence of the kind reminiscent of Egyptian statuary and the early Kouros figures. Porphyry was rare and reserved for imperial use.
The statue is well known for its missing foot, broken off while it was being plundered from Constantinopole in the 13th century. Miraculously, in 1960s, the foot was unearthed in Instanbul. Venice petitioned for the missing piece of statue, but Turkish authorities replied with a simple message: you stole the statue – we’re keeping out foot.
h Pala d’Oro (Italian, "Golden Pall" or "Golden Cloth") is the high altar retable of the Basilica di San Marco in Venice. It is universally recognized as one of the most refined and accomplished works of Byzantine craftsmanship, with both front and rear sides decorated.
h Primum non nocere – First, do not harm
h The Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, usually just called the Frari, is a church in Venice, northern Italy. One of the greatest churches in the city, it has the status of a minor basilica. It stands on the Campo dei Frari at the heart of the San Polo district. The church is dedicated to the Assumption (Italian: Assunzione della Beata Virgine).
h The Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Turkish: Sultan Ahmet Camii) is a historic mosque in Istanbul. The mosque is popularly known as the Blue Mosque for the blue tiles adorning the walls of its interior.
It was built from 1609 to 1616, during the rule of Ahmed I. Its Külliye contains a tomb of the founder, a madrasah and a hospice. The Sultan Ahmed Mosque is still popularly used as a mosque.
h The Topkapı Palace (Turkish: Topkapı Sarayı) is a large palace in Istanbul, Turkey, that was the primary residence of the Ottoman sultans for approximately 400 years (1465–1856) of their 624-year reign.
The palace complex consists of four main courtyards and many smaller buildings. At its peak, the palace was home to as many as 4,000 people, and covered a large area with a long shoreline. It contained mosques, a hospital, bakeries, and a mint. Construction began in 1459, ordered by Sultan Mehmed II, the conqueror of Byzantine Constantinople. It was originally called the New Palace (Yeni Sarayı) to distinguish it from the previous residence. It received the name "Topkapı" (Cannon Gate) in the 19th century, after a (now lost) gate and shore pavilion. The complex was expanded over the centuries, with major renovations after the 1509 earthquake and the 1665 fire.
After the 17th century, the Topkapı Palace gradually lost its importance as the sultans preferred to spend more time in their new palaces along the Bosphorus. In 1856, Sultan Abdül Mecid I decided to move the court to the newly built Dolmabahçe Palace, the first European-style palace in the city.
Following the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, Topkapı Palace was transformed by a government decree dated April 3, 1924, into a museum of the imperial era.
h Yedikule Fortress (Turkish Yedikule Hisarı, in Greek Ἑπταπύργιον, Heptapyrgion; meaning Fortress of the Seven Towers) is located in the Yedikule neighbourhood of Fatih, Istanbul, Turkey. It was built in 1458 by adding three new towers to a section of the Walls of Constantinople which included the Golden Gate.
h The Palace of the Porphyrogenitus (Greek: τὰ βασίλεια τοῦ Πορφυρογεννήτου), known in Turkish as the Tekfur Sarayı ("Palace of the Sovereign"), is a late 13th-century Byzantine palace in the north-western part of the old city of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul, Turkey). An annex of the greater palace complex of Blachernae, it is the only Byzantine palace to survive in the city, and one of the few relatively intact examples of late Byzantine secular architecture in the world.
h The so-called Prison of Anemas (Turkish: Anemas Zindanları) is a large Byzantine building attached to the walls of the city of Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey). It is traditionally identified with the prisons named after Michael Anemas, a Byzantine general who rose in unsuccessful revolt against Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118) and was the first person to be imprisoned there. The prison features prominently in the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire, when four Byzantine emperors were imprisoned there.
h The Hippodrome of Constantinople (Turkish: Sultanahmet Meydanı, At Meydanı) was a circus that was the sporting and social centre of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. Today it is a square named Sultanahmet Meydanı (Sultan Ahmet Square) in the Turkish city of Istanbul, with a few fragments of the original structure surviving. It is sometimes also called Atmeydanı (Horse Square) in Turkish.
The walkways were dotted with signage directing visitors to the park’s many attaractions – an Egyptian obelisk from Luxor, the Serpent column from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, and the Milion Column that once served as the ‘point zero’ from which all distances were measured in the Byzantine Empire.
h Until man is nothing, God can make nothing out of him Martin Luther
h The Basilica Cistern (Turkish: Yerebatan Sarayı - "Sunken Palace", or Yerebatan Sarnıcı - "Sunken Cistern"), is the largest of several hundred ancient cisterns that lie beneath the city of Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), Turkey. The cistern, located 500 feet (150 m) southwest of the Hagia Sophia on the historical peninsula of Sarayburnu, was built in the 6th century during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian
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