Arasta Bazaar

The Arasta Bazaar, located along the southern flank of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, sits directly above an 80-million-piece Byzantine mosaic floor discovered beneath its shop stalls. Established in 1617 by Sultan Ahmet I to fund the mosque's maintenance, the market originally sold Ottoman cavalry equipment under the name Sipahi Çarşısı. In 1935, archaeologists uncovered nearly 1,900 square meters of secular mosaic pavement from the ancient Great Palace of Constantinople buried underneath.

Istanbul · from the walk “Sultans, Spices & Hidden Streets” · audio ~4 min · Generated

Arasta Çarşısı, Torun Sokak, Sultanahmet, Fatih, İstanbul

What historic site was discovered beneath Istanbul's Arasta Bazaar in 1935?

Welcome to one of Istanbul's best-kept secrets... the Arasta Bazaar.......... You're standing in a quiet, sunlit arcade that runs along the southern flank of the Blue Mosque. It looks like a simple row of shops. But this place has layers... literally.......... This marketplace was first established in sixteen seventeen, during the reign of Sultan Ahmet the First, as part of the grand mosque complex known as the Sultanahmet Külliyesi. Its purpose? To fund the upkeep of the Blue Mosque itself. Every transaction, every coin that changed hands here, helped keep those famous blue tiles gleaming and those six minarets standing tall.......... But here's what most visitors never learn. This bazaar had a far more dramatic original name... Sipahi Çarşısi, meaning "cavalrymen's bazaar." In the seventeenth century, equipment for the Ottoman Empire's elite cavalry corps, the Sipahi, was sold right where you're walking now. Saddles, stirrups, harnesses... the tools of mounted warfare, traded under these very domes. Later, the area was even converted into stables for the horses of Ottoman rulers, given its closeness to the Sultanahmet Palace. Those stables eventually burned down in a devastating fire in nineteen twelve.......... But the Real surprise? It's beneath your feet.......... In nineteen thirty-five, archaeologists from the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland began digging here... and what they found was Staggering. Buried under centuries of debris lay the mosaic floor of the Great Palace of Constantinople, the primary residence of Byzantine emperors for over eight hundred years! This vast pavement, estimated at nearly nineteen hundred square meters, featured approximately eighty Million tiny colored stone cubes. Eighty million! Each one just five millimeters across, placed by hand.......... And unlike the religious mosaics you'll find in Hagia Sofia or the Chora Church, these scenes were entirely secular... hunters chasing wild animals, children playing with donkeys, griffins, lions, even a Dionysi-an procession. A vivid snapshot of daily life in an empire most people only imagine through its churches.......... So remember... as you browse the carpets and ceramics of this quiet little bazaar, you're walking above the living room floor of emperors who ruled half the known world.

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