Description
The Sultanahmet Square, also known as Hippodrome and surrounded by the famous Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia Turkish and Islamic, one of the most famous tourist areas in Istanbul, as well as a popular meeting point. The area is very impressive tourist zone of the Sultanahmet neighborhood on the Historical Peninsula that leads to all historical sites around Sultanahmet. It is very well known place for all Istanbul visitors, where they mostly head on for first, on their first day of Istanbul visit. Once being a Byzantium hippodrome, the square itself hosts the famous historic places and sights that include; the Egyptian Obelisk, the Serpentine Column, the Colossus or the Column of Costantine Porphyrgenitus and the German Fountain. The Hippodrome of Constantinople (Greek: Ἱππόδρομος τῆς Κωνσταντινουπόλεως, romanized: Hippódromos tēs Kōnstantinoupóleōs, Latin: Circus Maximus Constantinopolitanus, Turkish: Hipodrom or Sultanahmet Meydanı) was a circus that was the sporting and social centre of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. Today it is a square named Sultanahmet Meydanı (Sultan Ahmet Square) in the Turkish city of Istanbul, with a few fragments of the original structure surviving. The word hippodrome comes from the Greek hippos (ἵππος), horse, and dromos (δρόμος), path or way. For this reason, it is sometimes also called Atmeydanı ("Horse Square") in Turkish. Horse racing and chariot racing were popular pastimes in the ancient world and hippodromes were common features of Greek cities in the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine eras.
