What to See and Notice
**The Obelisk of Theodosius** is the square's showpiece. Carved from pink granite around 1490 BC under Pharaoh Thutmose III for the Temple of Karnak in Luxor, it was cut, shipped across the Mediterranean, and re-erected here by Emperor Theodosius in 390 AD. Despite nearly 3,500 years of weathering, its hieroglyphs remain sharp. Walk all the way around the marble pedestal base: each face carries a different relief scene — Theodosius offering a laurel wreath from the imperial box, kneeling barbarians bearing tribute, musicians, dancers, and chariot races. Two inscriptions, one in Latin and one in Greek, record how long it took to raise the monument: thirty days versus thirty-two.↗↗
**The Serpent Column** sits a short distance from the Obelisk, cast in bronze as a single mass of three coiled serpents. It was originally a thank-offering from 31 Greek city-states to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi after their victory over the Persians at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC — the names of those cities are still engraved along its coils. Constantine had it hauled to the Hippodrome around 324 AD. The serpents' heads were destroyed in the early 1700s; a recovered jaw fragment lives in the Istanbul Archaeology Museums. The column stands in a shallow excavation pit, revealing the original ground level of the ancient track roughly two metres below the modern surface.↗↗↗
**The Walled Obelisk** rises at the southern end of the axis. Built in the 10th century and restored by Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, it was once sheathed in gilded bronze plaques — an dazzling landmark that the Crusaders of 1204 stripped and melted, assuming the whole column was solid gold. The bare stone core you see today, about 32 metres high, still shows the holes where the plaques were bolted.↗↗
**The German Fountain**, at the northern entrance near the Blue Mosque, is a neo-Byzantine octagonal pavilion built in Germany and reassembled on site to commemorate Kaiser Wilhelm II's 1898 visit. It was inaugurated on the Kaiser's birthday, 27 January 1901. Look up at the dome's golden mosaics: they bear the monograms of both Wilhelm II and Sultan Abdülhamid II, an unusual pairing that speaks to the diplomatic theatre of the era.↗↗
**The Sphendone** — the U-shaped curved end of the stands — is partly visible at the southern end of the square. Lower courses of its Byzantine masonry were uncovered when surrounding houses were cleared in the 1980s, and they still give a tangible sense of the arena's original scale. The modern paving of the square itself traces the outline of the racetrack, though the actual track surface remains buried.↗
On the western side of the square, the **Palace of Ibrahim Pasha** — built in 1524 as the residence of Suleiman the Magnificent's grand vizier — now houses the **Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts**, renowned for its collection of carpets and Ottoman-era stonework. It is the only paid admission in the immediate area and pairs well with a visit to the monuments outside.↗
