[dramatic music] ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
Walk anywhere in the city of
Istanbul, and you're walking on top of the past. Dig anywhere
beneath the streets, and you'll uncover thousands
of years of hidden history. Most historic cities have
been extensively excavated, but in Istanbul archeologists
have just barely scratched the surface. On our quest to peel back
the layers of the city's buried past, there's no
telling what we'll find. This is incredible. This is very impressive. Pretty amazing. We're underground in
Istanbul but in a boat. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
There is an entire world beneath our feet,
layers of history left behind by the Romans,
Byzantines, and Ottomans. We'll bring the cities of
these fallen civilizations back to life, and empires will
rise from the ashes once again. We're peeling back
the layers of time to uncover the cities of
the underworld, Istanbul. [dramatic music] It's been called Byzantium,
New Rome, Constantinople. This strategic peninsula
sits with the Marmara sea on one side and the Bosphorus
Strait on the other. It's the only city in the world
that straddles two continents. This prime location made it
the perfect spot for empires to rise, fall, and rise again. I'm Eric Geller. I'm in Istanbul, Turkey,
and for centuries, this was the most powerful
city in the world. But when you're on top,
the only place to go is down, and down is
where these empires went. If you dig anywhere, you'll
find evidence of the fallen civilizations. There are cisterns,
and libraries, dungeon, hidden tunnels. There are entire cities
buried beneath our feet. Now, we can't shut down today's
modern day city to excavate, but there are other
ways to get underground. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
Today, Istanbul is part of the Democratic
Republic of modern Turkey, and the city's 11 million
inhabitants make up a melting pot of the cultures
these fallen empires have left behind. Everywhere you look the past
and the present collide. Taxis whiz by the 1,500-year-old
Byzantine church, Ayasofya. Couples stroll by
1,000-year-old Roman city walls, and tourists take pictures of
the almost 400-year-old Ottoman Blue Mosque. In most cities around the
world, this would be it, but in Istanbul, it's
only the beginning. We'll peel back
the layers of time, whisk away today's houses, busy
streets, and modern bazaars to find a hidden history like
no other city in the world. I'm not talking about a
catacomb or a tunnel or two. We're walking on top of entire
cities stacked like bricks, each layer of history
buried deeper than the next. The city began in the
seventh century BC as a small Greek fishing
village called Byzantium. 200 years later, the village
became a part of the vast Roman Empire, and in 330 AD it
was renamed Constantinople after emperor Constantine
moved his entire capital east. The Eastern Roman Empire, later
known as the Byzantine Empire, was born. For more than 1,000 years the
Byzantines flourished here. Then in 1453 Constantinople
was conquered by the Ottomans, becoming Istanbul. Almost 500 years after that,
the modern Turkish Republic was born. For 27 consecutive centuries,
these civilizations, the Greeks, the
Romans, and the Turks, built palaces, stadiums,
bathhouses, roads, each one trying to outdo the one before. Each time the city was
destroyed, the next generation simply rebuilt atop
the ruins of the past, adding their own layer
and in some cases, raising the ground level
by more than 40 feet. But how is this possible? How does an Ottoman
mosque literally sit on top of a lost Roman
palace or an apartment building not cave in to the
ancient Roman system below? My quest for answers begins
almost 1,700 years ago, when Istanbul was the new
capital of the Roman Empire. For centuries, this
city's prime location made it the most desirable
spot in the world. The Romans knew this,
and they acted quickly to defend their new capital. They built impenetrable
city walls. They chained off their harbors,
and perhaps most ingeniously, they found a way to protect
their greatest resource, drinking water. And it all started right here. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
The aqueduct was one of the Roman Empire's
greatest engineering feats. Beginning in the fourth
century, Constantinople's water began its journey 12
miles from the city center in the forest of Belgrade. Powered entirely by gravity, the
precise slope of the aqueduct's construction ingeniously
carried large amounts of water across uneven ground until
it was safely inside the city walls. The water was then diverted to
one of five open-air cisterns. Here it would purify
itself, depositing mineral and organic
matters, while still keeping its pressure. Next, the water made its way
into the many subterranean tunnels snaking beneath
the city streets. Its final destination
was one of the thousands of underground cisterns. Here it was stored until a
citizen of Constantinople decided to pump water from
the fountain up above. I met up with historical
guide Bora Sertbas in Sultanahmet Square. - Bora.
- Hi, Eric. How are you? ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
He was going to show me the largest
underground cistern in the city. Many believed it was from here
that the emperor himself got his water. In a minute you
won't believe your eyes what you will see down here. This is a totally different life
than what you've seen above. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): It's
called the Basilica Cistern, but the Turks call
it Yerebatan Sarnici. Surete or sunken palace. And that's exactly
what it looked like. Oh, this is amazing. The Basilica Cistern. ERIC GELLER: This is-- look
at the size of this place. BORA SERTBAS: This
is a huge place. You would have no idea
coming in off of the square. Yeah. I mean, there's
restaurants right there. About here. There's a park right here. A police station, everything. This is massive. And we are going to see
about over 100,000 square feet of an area here. This is the biggest
underground cisterns ever built by the Romans in this city. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
Emperor Justinian was responsible for building the
cistern in the sixth century. He also built the
nearby Ayasofya and was the emperor
under which paganism died and Christianity flourished. During his 43-year
rule, he was ambitiously able to reclaim the Western
Empire, reform Roman law, and rebuild much
of Constantinople. Today, the Basilica
Cistern is one of the largest Roman
structures left in the world. It's 459 feet long
and 229 feet wide. The roof is supported by
336 marble pillars spaced approximately 15 feet apart. The cistern was the key to
the survival of the empire. Since the city was
constantly under siege, the aqueducts, which acted as
natural bridges into the city, had to be broken
to prevent entry. The water stored in the system
helped sustain the residents of Constantinople
for months at a time. After the conquest,
1453, when the Ottomans came into the city, nobody
gave them a tour, OK, so they didn't
know where is what. For that reason, the
underground cisterns were not discovered
for a long time. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
But even after they were discovered, the Ottomans didn't
feel as vulnerable to attack as the Byzantines, so they
didn't rely on them as much. In addition, the Ottomans'
cultural preference for running water,
not still, helped add to the cistern's downfall. In the Turkish culture,
still water's considered dirty. When it runs, it's clean
water, and this is what we use. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
So the basilica system was forgotten
beneath the streets until 1544, when a Frenchman
named Pierre Gilles became suspicious of the endless
supplies of water and fish the locals were pulling
out of their basements. Gilles is credited with
rediscovering the Basilica Cistern after being invited
to fish beneath the basement of an old Ottoman home. [dramatic music] Today the Basilica Cistern
sits more than 25 feet underneath the modern city. For almost three city
blocks, anything you see, trains, restaurants, hotels,
even the police station is supported by the
sixth century sister. The decorative marble columns
credited with holding up today's city were
once immersed in water and were never meant to be seen. They were just
the recycled trash of Byzantine
construction, leftovers taken from nearby
temples or monuments. ERIC GELLER: How come
it doesn't fall down? How come, you know, the police
station isn't right there? How come this whole
city hasn't caved in? [laughs] That's
a good question. Now, at this point, we should
remember the very important thing. City is built on seven
principal hills, like Rome. When they had a valley,
they erect columns in there, put in the Roman arch, cover it. With one stone you
shoot two birds. You can have a water
storage underneath, and you have a flat
surface now above. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
Approximately 1,500 years and 25 major earthquakes
later, these columns were still supporting the cistern
and the city above, but they were also meant to
hide some of its secrets. ERIC GELLER: So who
is this fine person? BORA SERTBAS: This is Medusa
from the Greek mythology. Why is Medusa here? Is there some symbolic
reason for that? That's a very good
question, actually. One explanation is, since
everything is recycled material here, this is what they needed. They needed this
size of a stone. They put it underneath, and
they elevated to the height they wish. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): But
in Istanbul there are always other reasons. BORA SERTBAS: Another
explanation is-- 532 is the year. The most Christian
Emperor, Justinian, is building across the
street the Hagia Sophia, the biggest church ever
built in the Roman period. He was a very religious
person, and by burying Medusa, a pagan symbol, under the column
on the side and there upside, drowning her inside
the water, he was giving a message that the
pagan beliefs is helpless even to itself. So not only are they
storing water here, but they're hiding the past. They're burying paganism at
the bottom of the cistern. I couldn't say it better. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
Istanbul has been called the City of Cistern, and
while the Basilica Cistern is the biggest, it's just
one of the hundreds of gaping ancient
holes forgotten beneath the modern city streets. I would say even some people
wouldn't know they have cistern under their houses,
and they're sitting on a heritage of 1,500 years
old without even knowing it. [traditional music] ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): Nakkas
is located in the old quarter of the city and specializes
in high-end Turkish carpets, pottery, and jewelry,
but the real treasure is hidden beneath the store. Owner Cengis Korkmaz has
agreed to take me down. Yeah, you can definitely
feel the humidity. This is our cistern area. Amazing, amazing. Isn't that beautiful? ERIC GELLER: It's amazing. CENGIS KORKMAS: It's
an incredible place. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
A cistern of this size would normally require
only about eight columns for support, but
this one has 18, indicating an important palace
building might have been on top of it. Today history is
repeating itself. ERIC GELLER: You've got a
massive store above it, 20,000 square feet roughly.
CENGIS KORKMAS: Yes. ERIC GELLER: What
kind of considerations do you have to do to
preserve this cistern? Actually, in the process of
building on top of the cistern, we really thought
very carefully. We said, we have to keep
this place in authentic size and originality, so with did a
special kind of construction. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): Nakkas
was designed by an engineer who came up with a groundbreaking
way to build the new 1,000-square-foot building
above while protecting the Roman cistern below. Instead of using
reinforced concrete beams, they used steel. That's 10% to 15% less
pressure on the structure below and 30% less than
the older buildings that once unknowingly
sat on top of the system. CENGIS KORKMAS: We
built more than beams than we needed to distribute the
weight of the building above so not to give any
pressure to the system. So the main thing is that
lighter weight, more columns to support it, steel columns? Exactly. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
30 steel beams instead of the required 20 we're
used to distribute the weight. Next, engineers actually
reoriented the building and angled it so it didn't
sit directly on the cistern. This way, only eight
of the 30 beams come in contact
with the cistern. The entire project
cost $2.5 million. Without the cistern, it
would cost half that. There's a lot of things
underground of Istanbul, and I believe, as much
as we have on ground, we have much more than that
underground of Istanbul. But they're all waiting
to be discovered. [cheering] It's Saturday night in Istanbul,
and this is the place to be. But when the Romans were
here, they built a stadium twice this size. Now imagine a
deadly chariot races circling the field, the
emperor and his family in the royal box, and about
100,000 screaming people, just like these. Now, this great hippodrome--
it still exists. It's just about 15 feet
beneath the city streets. [traditional music] ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
But how can an ancient race track twice the size of
Istanbul's biggest soccer stadium just disappear beneath
the ground, and how could I get under there to see it? [dramatic music] Hi, Eric. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): I
met with Cimen Filiz Pasa, an historic guide in the busy
tourist square of Sultanahmet in the old quarter of the city. Today's modern city has spread
far beyond the original Roman city walls and across the
Bosphorus Strait into Asia, but remnants of the old city
still remain beneath our feet. [dramatic music] In 306 AD, Constantine
was named emperor of Rome, dubbed Constantine the Great
by Christian historians for legalizing Christianity
during these pagan times. He also successfully united
the vast Roman Empire under one emperor. As his empire grew, Rome became
further away from the empire's eastern expansion, so
in 324 AD, Constantine chose to move his capital to a
strategic but provincial city called Byzantium,
later Constantinople. Not long after the
move the Roman empire's western provinces, including
Rome, fell to the barbarians. In 330 AD, the Roman
Empire, with Constantinople as its capital, became known as
the Eastern Roman Empire, later called the Byzantine Empire. Constantine's
decision to relocate had changed the
course of history, making Constantinople the
most powerful place on Earth. The palace, the
Hippodrome, and the church Ayasofya where the three
most important buildings of the empire. This trifecta was once
located in the square where we were walking. Today, Ayasofya is the
only building of the three still standing above the ground. The original Hippodrome
was built in 203 AD by the Roman emperor Septimius
Severus, but in 324 AD, Emperor Constantine began to
add his own layer by expanding the original structure to
rival Circus Maximus in Rome. He added more seats,
enough to fit 100,000 cheering spectators, and
extended the U-shaped track to over 1300 feet long and
approximately 250 feet wide, an arena the size of five
and a half football fields. He decorated the
center spina or median with monuments brought in from
regions throughout the empire. These monuments were a
reflection of Rome's power but were also used to block
the view of the spectators on purpose. They added to the
suspense of the spectators as the chariots
disappeared and reappeared from behind the
spina as they rounded the deadly U-shaped turns. But the Hippodrome wasn't
just for entertainment. It was also a place for citizens
to confront their emperor, often resulting in bloody riots. After a chariot race and
532 AD, angry protesters began a revolt against
Emperor Justinian's rule. After five days of protest,
between 30,000 to 50,000 rioters were slaughtered. This infamous event was
called the Nika revolt, and the bodies of
its victims are rumored to be buried in the
bowels of the Hippodrome. Byzantine bones,
spectator seats. There were no bulldozers
to clear away the remains, so no one knows for sure
what they'd find layered beneath today's pavement. But three surviving monuments
from the Hippodrome's spina act as the perfect gauge for
determining how much the ground level has changed in
almost 1,700 years. CIMEN FILIZ PASA:
If you go look down, you can see the original
level of this spina. I'm sure. Right, right, right. And it is like
almost 15 feet down. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
But Cimen told me, before I tried to go
down, I should go up to really understand the
evolution of the Hippodrome. I was granted special permission
to climb one of the six minarets or towers of the
famous Blue Mosque, the highest vantage point in the old city. This iconic mosque took the
Ottomans seven years to build and was completed in 1616. It is believed to
sit directly on top of the ruined western
stands of the Hippodrome and the remains of the
emperor's royal box. ERIC GELLER: We're climbing
135 steps, a little wider here. I never thought I'd be inside
a minaret, a little darkness here. This is incredible,
definitely worth the climb. So you can roughly see
what would have been the outlines of the Hippodrome. From about that green fountain
where the road follows around was this massive racecourse. It goes around the obelisks,
and right around that building, all the way around here you
would have seen chariot races and all the festivities that
went on in the Hippodrome. This must have been
a massive place. [traditional music] ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): But the
transition from horses rounding the tracks to taxis 15 feet
above didn't happen overnight. The tradition of the Hippodrome
came from the pagan Greeks, and in a city full of
both Christian and Muslim influences, it was
no wonder it ended up buried beneath the ground. This Hippodrome,
for 1,000 years, center, heart of
the Roman Empire. It was important
for Byzantium also, but the importance changed
because in paganism you live in this arc, in this
life, but in Christianity, this is your suffering place. If you are going to
be a good believer, you don't have time to
joy, for entertaining. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
The pious Byzantines may have had no time for
fun at the Hippodrome, but it was another religious
group who silenced the stands for good. In 1204, the fourth crusades
breached the city walls, and the richest Christian
city in the world was pillaged beyond recognition. The crusaders destroyed
almost everything, including the Hippodrome. They looted four fifth-century
bronze horses on display in the Hippodrome and
took them back to Venice. For centuries, they were on
display at the famous St. Mark's Cathedral. When the Ottomans
conquered Istanbul in 1453, the great Hippodrome
was in ruins. CIMEN FILIZ PASA: The Ottoman
Empire also paid importance to this place. This was the center of the city. That's why they built all their
beautiful building around here. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): Much
of the elevated ground level we see today came about when
dirt and debris from building the Blue Mosque was
dumped to the side, right on top of
the old race track. Construction of other Ottoman
buildings in the square did the same. So beneath the
ground of the square I find the race track
of the Hippodrome, but just a few minutes
walk down a natural valley, Cimen was about to show me
the only structural part of the Hippodrome
still standing. It's called the sphendone. You see, this
is the sphendone . This is the outer wall
of the Hippodrome. It has a curve, and when we have
a car and a higher platform, we call it sphendone. [dramatic music] ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
Today, on top of the sphendone sits a more recent layer of
the past, Sultanahmet Technical High School. This is a
third-century wall that was part of the Hippodrome,
and right now its construction is so solid that it's holding
up the school, pretty good Roman engineering. The sphendone was holding
up the high school and much of Sultanahmet
Square, and it was all that was stopping
me from getting beneath the ancient Hippodrome. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
Most locals never think twice about the inconspicuous
third-century wall in the middle of Istanbul's
Sultanahmet Square. But beyond it lies the
remains of the ancient Roman 100,000-seat Hippodrome. The area has never been fully
excavated by archeologists, but I was determined to see
what remained of its underworld. Based on the Circus
Maximus in Rome, the Hippodrome was built
into a natural valley that slopes southward
towards the sea. Engineers first closed off
the south end of the valley with a U-shaped wall
called the sphendone. It rose over 130 feet high
and linked up with the stands while the racetrack sat
below on the valley floor. While the track was
flat, the ground slopes down towards
the sphendone, creating a cavernous
underbelly or backstage, starting where the track ends
and the sphendone begins. This underbelly was
rumored to be intact, and we'd been granted special
permission by the antiquities authorities to get inside. Even archeologists have
trouble gaining access. A little difficulty opening
the gates to the Hippodrome. [inaudible] What do you think? We have some friends down here. We got some, like, little
dung beetles or something. [suspenseful music] Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are we seeing here? It looks like, actually,
like it sort of naturally filled in on itself, like
maybe the roof gave in. I can't tell if this
was filled in or not. It's hard to get a sense. But this case goes
back further, but I don't think we're going to
be able to get back there, at least through this way. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
Off the circular corridor, I could see about six
rooms, and inside each room was a caved-in entrance
to another tunnel. Could these lead to the
racetrack of the Hippodrome? ERIC GELLER: So this room
and all these other chambers like this would have
been behind the scenes. It would have been like in
NASCAR, a pit stop, right? The race car blows a tire. It needs more fuel. They might have
come right in here. They could have had chariot
supplies, wheels, water, anything you need, and
100,000 screaming people were standing right out there. I see steps. Oh, wow. Can you hear that? Can we explore down here? I hear something
scampering around. CIMEN FILIZ PASA:
Be careful, Eric. I'm trying to be careful here. It looks like it's a good
30, 40 feet up from here, and the masonry and
stonework looks impeccable. And it'd have to be if it stood
up for, oh, let's say, 1,500, 1,600 years. It looks like I can't take
another step down because it looks like it's-- it's
flooded out down here. Yeah, this doesn't
look like it's probably the end of the road for us. ERIC GELLER
(VOICEOVER): The water was preventing me from exploring
the Hippodrome any further, or was it? Hasan bey! It's nice to meet you, Hasan. Hasan Oral is an
urban cave explorer who has navigated secret
tunnels and waterways deep beneath the entire city. Take some of the boats. OK. So we've got simply a rubber
raft in their, rubber boat? Yes, yep. OK. Have you ever been
in here before? Have you been? No, this is the first time. So you don't know what
you're going to find, do you? No. Down is the [inaudible]. One. Gotcha, gotcha. OK, now let's go inside. OK. I'm just going to
grab whatever I can. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
Would we find the tunnels where the horses galloped
into the Hippodrome or the passageways that led
to the emperor's royal box? ERIC GELLER: Yeah, I think
there's a little bit of a leak. Could be. So we're going to get stranded
somewhere in the Hippodrome, and they'll find us
1,000 years later. OK. Go now. What do you think? Now I go in on my
knees, I'm guessing. Yes, yes. On your knees is the best. Yeah. OK. OK. Can I have a paddle? Here's a paddle for you. It's pretty amazing. We're underground in
Istanbul but in a boat, and we're paddling
through the Hippodrome. And clearly you're getting
run-off from pollution from the streets. It smells like feces. I mean, I don't know
what's down here, but it's not very pleasant. But this used to be
the center of the city. I mean, you hate to say
it, but this very well could have been a toilet
for the Hippodrome, right? This could be ancient [bleep]
that floating in this water. It seems like about
every, what, 20 or 30 feet we find a new chamber. There could have been supplies
here, storage for chariot's. I mean, it's big
enough to be a stable. There could have very
well been horses in here. This could have been where
the athletes prepared or the circus entertainment. It looks like there's
some debris over here. I can't even make this
out over in the corner. It is concrete. It is concrete there. We had hit another
layer of history. The wall was clearly
not Roman or Byzantine. It was most likely the remains
of a late Ottoman wall. Hasan says the Ottomans
had turned the sphendone into a cistern
for water storage. The walls were
covered in concrete, and based on the water we
had just paddled through, the cistern was
still doing its job. So this is our way, but we've
got to see what's behind it. We've got to keep going, right? Yeah, so let's climb it. All right, let us climb. [dramatic music] OK. All right, let's do it. All right, we're
getting our first look. I'll tell you what I see here. This is exactly a flat face. It's a smooth face. We're dammed off right here,
and it's a smooth face. And we don't have the
equipment to get down. You can see more water
down there in this tunnel, and maybe this tunnel right
here would lead directly into the Hippodrome. And I'm sorry to say I'm not
going to be able to see it. So this is the end
of the road for us, but Rome wasn't built in a day. And we're not going to discover
everything about Istanbul and its underworld
in one day either. And Hasan, you're going to be
the one who gets to find out what's over there, huh? Yes, I think that we will come
with more people and some more equipment that we have
a look what's there. [upbeat music] Today we know this
city as Istanbul, but almost 1,700 years ago
this was Constantinople, the very spot that Emperor
Constantine hand-picked to be the new capital of
the Roman Empire. Constantine wanted his capital
to be bigger and better than Rome. He started by building a
palace that would become the envy of the world. So where is this
grand palace now? [dramatic music] ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): The
palatial complex Constantine built here when he relocated
his capital was called the Great Palace and stretched
for approximately 860,000 square feet. That's larger than
15 football fields. The palace compound began
at the Sea of Marmara and continued all the
way to the Hippodrome. Off limits to the public,
it was like a small city for the emperor and
his royal court. The grounds housed state
buildings, throne rooms, churches, libraries,
thermal baths, fountains, and ornate courtyards. Its bronze gates,
roaring mechanical lions, and mosaic tile sidewalks
made it one of the wonders of the ancient world. But towards the end of
the Byzantine Empire, in a much debated
move the royal family left this grandeur for a
smaller palace further inland. No one is exactly sure
why, but this decision was the start of the decline
of Constantine's famous Great Palace. When the Fourth Crusade
sacked the city in 1204, the crusaders are
said to have lived in the remains of the palace
they helped to destroy and even stored their
stolen loot there. The Ottomans conquered in 1453
and began to rebuild the area to suit their needs, recycling
materials left behind. Soon walls of the palace
became walls of Ottoman homes. Byzantine stones helped
build new mosques. After 470 years of Ottoman
rule, the great palace slowly had disappeared
beneath the ground and was all but
forgotten until 1912, when a fire raged through
Sultanahmet Square, destroying hundreds of homes. When the debris
was cleared away, Constantine's Great Palace
rose from the ashes. The lost seat of
Rome was found, and I was about to see it for myself. The fire had helped to unearth a
fourth-century palace courtyard and one of the best examples
of mosaic artwork in the world, artwork commissioned
by Emperor Justinian 200 years after
Constantine first built this imperial palace. The mosaics had been hidden
by homes for centuries. ERIC GELLER: So essentially
this grand mosaic is a sidewalk for emperors. They would have strolled
onto the Hippodrome, perhaps, or another part of
their palace, and you can see how gorgeous this is,
how grand the palace must have been. It's not hard to imagine that
Emperor Justinian himself followed the same path that I
am, of course, on the mosaic. ERIC GELLER
(VOICEOVER): The mosaics were part of a royal peristyle
or enclosed courtyard lined with columns. The courtyard was part
of the massive complex of the great palace. Today I could only see 2,690
square feet, only one eighth of the entire size
of the courtyard, but 1,500 years ago,
the mosaics would continue for approximately
20,000 square feet. That's 75 to 80 million
handcrafted mosaic sidewalk pieces. I met up with archeologist
Ferudun Ozg m s to find out where the rest of the
palace was hiding. Hello, sir. Very nice to meet you. Thank you for your time. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
He grew up in the old city and was playing in
subterranean tunnels and the substructures of
the great palace before he or anyone knew what they were. This brick right here,
right, if I remove this brick and keep digging, what
am I going to find? The ruins of the great
palace right underneath that? ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): He's
taking me beneath the streets to a part of the great palace
that has never been excavated and few know exist. Asia Minor Carpet Shop
doesn't look much different than all the other carpet
shops on the block, but beneath its courtyard store
owners came across an entrance. One wheelbarrow at a time,
they began removing the dirt until they had exposed five
vaulted chambers believed to be part of the substructure
of Constantine's lost Great Palace. This is very impressive. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): We were
in the substructure or basement of the great palace. The throne room, where
Constantine greeted his guests, was believed to have once
stood just above our heads. The Byzantines are rumored to
have kept wild animals down here. The crusaders may have walked
through these very rooms. Later, the Ottomans are said
to have used these rooms as prisons. So I see you searching around
this room somewhat frantically, but it's as if you're
putting together the pieces of a puzzle. And here? ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): It
was actually an Ottoman wall blocking off a tunnel once
supported by a Roman arch later reinforced by
a Byzantine arch. That's three empires
all making use of the same space, 1,700 years
of layered history right here. So it looks like just beyond
this mound there's another arch that--
- Yes. --leads to another room. And all of these
things very well could have led from the palace
to Ayasofya to the Hippodrome because we're not that far
away from the Hippodrome. So this could have
led to the Hippodrome. Yes, it could, yeah. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): That
meant almost every building or shop for 30 blocks sat on top
of a part of the substructure of the palace. There could be escape routes
underneath the nearby hotel. A modern restaurant could be
on top of the pathways that let exotic animals
to the Hippodrome, and a taxi might
be driving over one of the palaces lost
libraries right now. It looks like a
built-in chamber. There's another
layer below there? This could have been a tomb? ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
Without proper study, Ferudun says there's no way
of telling if this is really a tomb, but evidence of one
just added to the mystery of this city's subterranean. [traditional music] ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): After
almost 300 years of Roman, 1,000 years of Byzantine, and
500 years of Ottoman rule, Istanbul's underground is like
a museum that has acquired a collection of exquisite
cisterns, priceless mosaics, and secret palatial rooms. But these treasures share the
soil with a more sinister side of Istanbul's past. Three months ago, just across
town in the quiet neighborhood of Balat, one of the
Byzantine Empire's most brutal and notorious
dungeons was found. Guide Ali Pasa and chief
archeologist Sirin Akinci agreed to take me down into the
12th-century Anemas Dungeon-- Watch you steps. Watch your hat as well. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): --where
the most common form of torture was to burn out a
prisoner's eyes. [dramatic music] So if you look up, you get a
good sense of how far down we are, and maybe from
the bottom down it's probably, what, about
60 feet, 80 feet, something like that? I mean, you get a sense
of how many rooms, at least just from
off this view. There's one, two, three,
four, five, six sections that I can see just right here. So this looks like
quite a maze here. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): This
nearly 1,000-year-old prison started off as an annex for the
nearby Byzantine Tekfur Palace, but unlike the early
Romans or Ottomans, whose rulers all
shared a bloodline, anyone could become the next
emperor of the Byzantines. Over the next 350 years,
plots to kill the emperor were so common he needed
a place large enough and a punishment
severe enough to hold on to his position of power. ALI PASA: So what
happens to you-- they start torturing you. They blind you, and
they cut your tongue. They may pierce your ear drum. They would even castrate you. So they may keep you forever
here until you're nobody, nothing, just kind of a
creature that cannot speak. Not a pretty place to be. No, not really. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): Just
three months ago, this dungeon was full of dirt and debris. Locals had heard rumors
of it, but no one could have imagined
something so huge was buried underneath
their neighborhood and directly beneath
this 16th-century mosque. The dungeon below is
shaped like a backbone. The long corridor that
becomes wider towards the end resembles the spine, and the 12
vaulted chambers branching off on each side resemble
the vertebrae. It's believed that the
subterranean dungeon was three stories high, ranging from
60 to 80 feet in height, with wood planks that have
since disintegrated separating the floors but not
the torturous cries. Rooms where approximately
10 feet wide, and between 30 to 40 feet long. 12 Byzantine arches
act as support for this underground structure,
as does the rocky hill the dungeon was built into. Sirin Akinci has only
begun to clear out one side of the dungeon. An identical wing is believed to
be buried just beside this one. [dramatic music] But what else is buried
beneath Istanbul? A worsening traffic
problem became the catalyst to find out. How are you, sir? Thank you very much. Murat Ozt rk is overseeing one
of the world's most ambitious public transportation projects. The $2.6 billion Marmara
project will add over 200 miles of tunnels to
Istanbul's already crowded underground. The end result will be the third
largest metro system in Europe, and it's expected to ease the
traffic congestion of the city by 40%. Ozt rk brings me
down almost 100 feet, the equivalent of a
10-story building, deep into the bowels
of Istanbul's infamous underground. INTERPRETER: We're building a
world in which seven or eight million people at the
same time can move around beneath the ground of Istanbul. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): But how
do they dig without disturbing the past? The answer is by digging deep. Some of the richest
cultural layers of the city were left behind by the
Byzantines and Ottomans and are found between 6 and
65 feet below street level, so the metro has to dig even
deeper, to 75 feet or more. In addition, a team
of engineers use sonar to determine where
artifacts were buried, and the path of the metro
was mapped out accordingly. INTERPRETER: But in
a city like Istanbul, you can meet with
something else, something different at every 10
meters below the surface, so we should be prepared
to face it, to find it. And so if you do
run into an antiquity, do you just change directions? MURAT OZT RK: [speaking turkish] INTERPRETER: If what
we face is too massive, we might have to change
our direction as well. ERIC GELLER
(VOICEOVER): To avoid this, teams of up
to 80 archeologists work quickly to safely
remove whatever they can from the path of the metro. When you talk about Istanbul,
archeologists are our partners. Archeologists are the biggest
supporters of our construction sites. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): At
the Yenicapi metro dig site a few miles away, official
digging hasn't begun, but archeologists are
working against the clock to remove one of the
dig's greatest finds from the path of the metro. It's a find that was
truly unexpected. Dr. Cemal Pulak from
Texas A&M University was brought in to help. And the main
reason why I'm here is in one of their
soundings, they stumbled on two shipwrecks, and
I came here about two months ago. And since then, they've
stumbled on three more, and maybe tomorrow we'll
have another half a dozen. ERIC GELLER
(VOICEOVER): Dr. Pulak is an underwater
archeologist specializing in ancient shipwrecks,
and while today Yenikapi is over a quarter-mile
away from the sea, it was once part of a
massive Byzantine harbor. [suspenseful music] We go 13 feet down and
over 1,000 years back into Byzantine history to
the 11th century sea level. CEMAL PULAK: We're standing at
the bottom of the lake 10th, early 11th century
Byzantine Harbor floor. OK, so 1,000 years ago
we'd be swimming right now? That's right. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
Cemal says a storm caused this 11th century
merchant ship to sink to the bottom of the harbor. The large port side in front of
us lodged into the harbor floor and was immediately covered
by a protective layer of sand. CEMAL PULAK: As soon as the
ship sank, it was covered over, and even the people who lost the
ship must have looked for it. And they lost it. But then over time, of
course, the harbor silted in, and it became marshland. Then, of course, once
the area dried up, it was used as an
orchard or gardens, and then eventually the city
took over from the 16th century onward. And then we have
continuous habitation on top of the sea
to the 21st century, and people living
above it had no idea that this was once the sea
and there are shipwrecks laying below them. And as a ship that's found right
in the middle of the city just by chance only because they
were constructing the metro, we have here before us
perhaps a missing link between the earliest
methods of ship building and a method that we use
today to build ships. And this is just one
of thousands, millions of artifacts, things if we
just dig underneath Istanbul we'll find them.
- That's right. - Amazing.
- That's right. Amazing. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): 27
centuries, three empires, one historic peninsula. The ground is saturated, and
the tiniest opening, even a hole in a basement,
might be an entrance into one of the many unexplored
layers of the underworld of Istanbul. It's a constant guessing game
for archeologists, engineers, and architects, and in this
city the game has no end. Fast forward 2,000 years into
the future when the city begins expanding its metro or breaking
ground for a new hotel. They begin digging a few feet
beneath their modern layer, and run into the 21st century. What will they find
that we left behind? [music escalates] [dramatic music] and I believe, as much
as we have on ground, we have much more than that
underground of Istanbul. But they're all waiting
to be discovered. [cheering] ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): Coming
up, today's soccer stadium is nothing compared to
the Roman one buried 15 feet beneath the ground. This is incredible. neering. The sphendone was holding
up the high school and much of Sultanahmet
Square, and it was all that was stopping
me from getting beneath the ancient Hippodrome. [dramatic music] Coming up, no one had ever
done what I was about to do. It's pretty amazing. We're underground in
Istanbul but in a boat. We're paddling through
the Hippodrome. Yes, I think that we will come
with more people and some more equipment that we have
a look what's there. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER): Coming
up, almost 100 years ago, a fire destroyed the old city,
and Constantine's lost palace was found. Today I'm going beneath
this carpet shop to find another
piece of the puzzle. So it looks like just beyond
this mound there's another arch that--
- Yes. --leads to another room. Another room, yes. ERIC GELLER (VOICEOVER):
Without proper study, Ferudun says there's no way
of telling if this is really a tomb, but evidence of one
just added to the mystery of this city's subterranean. Next, boring a hole into
Istanbul's underground just might reveal its sinister side. They cut your tongue. They may pierce your ear
drum, maybe even castrate you. Not a pretty place to be. No, not really.
