Serpent Column

The Serpent Column in Istanbul is an 18-foot-high ancient Greek bronze monument cast from melted-down Persian armor after the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC. Originally erected at Delphi, Emperor Constantine relocated the 2,500-year-old column to Constantinople in 324 AD. Inscribed with 31 Greek city-states, the bronze spiral survived the Crusades after being converted into a fountain, though its three serpent heads broke off mysteriously in 1700.

Istanbul · from the walk “Sultans, Spices & Hidden Streets” · audio ~3 min · Generated

Yılanlı Sütun, At Meydanı Cd., Sultanahmet, Fatih, İstanbul

When was the Serpent Column relocated to Istanbul by Constantine the Great?

Look at this modest, weathered stump of bronze rising from a pit in the ground. It doesn't look like much, does it? But what you're seeing is one of the Oldest surviving bronze monuments on Earth... and it has witnessed more history than almost any object in existence.......... It was built to commemorate the Greeks who fought and defeated the Persian Empire at the Battle of Platea in four seventy-nine B.C. The historian Herodotus recorded that the metal was reclaimed from melted-down Persian weapons and armor. Imagine that... the very swords and shields that tried to enslave Greece, reforged into a monument of victory.......... Cast in one piece, the roughly eighteen-foot-high bronze depicted three snakes entwined about each other. It was topped with three menacing snake heads with open jaws, which in turn supported a golden tripod and great bowl. The names of thirty-one Greek city-states that participated in the battle were inscribed into its coils.......... For eight hundred years it stood at Delphi, beside the altar of Apollo. Then, it was relocated to Constantinople by Constantine the Great in three twenty-four. Why here, of all places? Because Delphi had been regarded as the center of the world... and it's possible Constantine was claiming that status for his new capital.......... Now here's where it gets strange. By the end of the Byzantine era, locals believed the column contained snake venom and could cure anyone bitten by a snake. The Ottoman traveler Evliya Chelebi described it as protecting the city from snakes, scorpions, and other vermin. People genuinely feared what might happen if the serpent heads were damaged.......... And damaged they were. Between fifty and one hundred years after the Turkish conquest, the jaw of one serpent head was documented missing. The accepted version states that Mehmed the Second shattered it upon entering the city as its conqueror. But other Ottoman writers attributed the lost jaw to Selim the Second, Suleiman the Second, or Murad the Fourth... all said to have struck it off to show their strength. Nobody can agree who did it.......... But the Real mystery came later. An Ottoman chronicler relates in the Nusretname that the heads simply fell off on the night of October twentieth, seventeen hundred. A primary source records that all three heads "broke all together at their necks and fell to the ground" with a noise "as if a powerful man were chopping down trees." And supposedly, there was not even anyone nearby! One theory blames a drunken diplomat. Others suggest that after twenty-two hundred years, the ancient bronze welds simply gave way... but the circumstances remain mysterious.......... Excavations in eighteen fifty-five uncovered water channels and traces of lead piping underneath the column, indicating it once served as a fountain. It was probably this practical use that saved it from being melted down or looted by the Crusaders in twelve oh four.......... So take one more look at this ancient bronze spiral. It survived the fall of Greece, the rise of Rome, the Crusades, and the Ottoman conquest. Two and a half Thousand years... still standing, still keeping its secrets.

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