Originally it is part of a nice roman structure used as a marker....
According to Wikipedia... (I feel I doing my Istanbul tour twice.. once in person, on location.. once on the internet.. wahahhaa)
"The Milion (Greek: Μίλ(λ)ιον), was a mile-marker monument erected in the early 4th century AD in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey). It was the starting-place for measurement of distances for all the roads leading to the cities of the Byzantine Empire and had the same function as the Milliarium Aureum of Rome. The domed building of the Milion rested on 4 large arches, and it was expanded and decorated with several statues and paintings. It had survived intact, following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (1453), for about the next 50 years, but disappeared at the start of the 16th century. During excavations in the 1960s, some partial fragments of it were discovered under houses in the area."
THat is a pity.. I would have liked to see it in its full glory... anyway, I went online to search and found that there is a similar structure with the same function in Jordan.. so probably.. originally, it looked like this..
Nice hor...
Apparently, according to Wiki..
"When Emperor Constantine I the Great rebuilt the city of Byzantium to make it his new imperial capital, which he named Nova Roma ("New Rome"), he consciously emulated many of the features of "Old Rome". Among these was the Milion: it was a tetrapylon (that is what that structure is called) surmounted by a dome, built in the first Region of the city, near the old Walls of Byzantium, at the very beginning of the main thoroughfare of the new city, the Mese (Μέση Οδός), which at that point formed a bend....
After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (1453), the building remained intact up to the end of the fifteenth century.[4] It disappeared possibly at the beginning of the sixteenth century because of the enlargement of the nearby aqueduct and the subsequent erection of the nearby suterazi (Turkish: "water tower", lit. "water scale")."
THat is his very sian look to find tat the top of his fav colour had a crack..
Cute!
We went back in... and met an excellent sales person!:) So we were sold and bought our lamps from him..
His name is LEO and when we first met him.. he said to us, "Come in, come in and take a look, almost free..."
Usually, I wouldnt have walked in.. BUT... Leo's shop had the rainbow design that we liked and couldnt find or see anywhere else..
He told us that he has his own design and his own factory and that we could email him for catalogue, orders or replacements etc etc etc...
When we asked him to show us his catalogue.. he passed the book to us.. and said, "be afraid.. be very afraid... are you prepared now.. to spend your money?"
Wahahhaa... his cocky confidence was strangely reassuring.. hahahah
And he also made lots of jokes like when Max asked me about my opinion... and Leo said, "Oh, so it is also the same in your country? The women are the one who is the head of the household?"
It was very very very cold that night.. I had to put on the hoodie the moment we went out of the hotel....
We walked around a little and I told Max to please choose to eat nearby cos I was very hungry and also it was too cold to walk around too much as my legs were feeling cold.. not a good sign..
While we were there, there were many people who walked in to sell things. Many of them were children.. they will come in and sell little knick knacks like the flower headbands.. I wonder why there are so many children selling things here... is it that life here is really difficult for them or what...
After that, went back and I basically FAINTED cos I was soooooooo tired... hahaha...
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