After picking up our jaws as we left Hagia Sofia we walked down the street to the entrance of the Underground (Major) Cistern - once a storage facility for precious water, now a tourist attraction and concert hall (they say the acoustics are wonderful!). This was another amazing sight! THe pillars used to support the cistern had been taken from ruins around the empire and brought to Constantinople to be burried underground and never seen again. In one of the corners there are two Medussa heads that were used to prop up shorter pillars. One story states that this was meant as a slap in the face to the Romans after a history of Christian persecution, but others believe the stones just happened to be the right size to make the pillars fit. Either way it is pretty cool to see.
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