The German Fountain & the Head of the Hippodrome
Why is it significant?
Walk up to the octagonal pavilion with dark green columns and a little bronze dome at the northern tip of the long square. Step underneath and look up into its dome: gold mosaic, with the monograms of two rulers woven into it, an Ottoman sultan and a German Kaiser.
Key Facts
| Place | The German Fountain & the Head of the Hippodrome |
|---|---|
| Address | Sultan Ahmet, Sultanahmet Meydanı, 34122 Fatih/İstanbul, Türkiye |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.00710, 28.97670 |
| Part of Walk | Constantinople Underfoot: Byzantine Istanbul Beneath Sultanahmet |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk up to the octagonal pavilion with dark green columns and a little bronze dome at the northern tip of the long square. Step underneath and look up into its dome: gold mosaic, with the monograms of two rulers woven into it, an Ottoman sultan and a German Kaiser.
This is the Alman Çeşmesi, the German Fountain, a gift from Kaiser Wilhelm the Second to Sultan Abdülhamid the Second, remembering the Kaiser's visit to the city in 1898. It was designed and made in Germany, shipped in pieces, and inaugurated in 1901 on the Kaiser's birthday. Its style is neo-Byzantine, a German idea of what Constantinople ought to look like... set down on the very spot where the real Byzantium once roared.
Because you are standing at the head of the Hippodrome. The square follows its outline almost exactly. Begun under Septimius Severus and enlarged by Constantine, it was around four hundred and fifty metres long and held perhaps a hundred thousand people. Up at this end were the starting gates for the chariots, and above them, the story goes, stood four gilded bronze horses.
The racing teams, the Blues and the Greens, were fan clubs, street gangs and political parties all at once. In January 532 they united against Justinian under the cry Nika, conquer, and set half the city on fire. The emperor was ready to flee until, according to the historian Procopius, the empress Theodora told the council that she would rather die an empress than live a fugitive. Troops were sent into the packed Hippodrome, and Procopius puts the dead at some thirty thousand.
And the bronze horses? In 1204 the knights of the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople, and the horses were shipped to Venice, where they still guard the basilica of San Marco. Now walk south along the square, past the stone monuments that stand in a line down its middle. The first of them is the oldest thing in the city.