... Antique peasants entering this temple were stunned by magnificency of its columns. These 330 fifteen-metre-high monsters made the place look like some evil stone forest. Among the marble thick columns, one could see the altar. Approaching to statues of gods, poor old peasant got almost fainted of fright. Then, he kneeled by them, and, turning his head, saw the hideous woman head with snakes instead of hair.
"Oh, dear! It’s Gorgon!" the poor thing managed to think fleeing from the temple...
... Now Gorgon head standing on a huge rock near a column does not scare anyone in this temple. Well, maybe, it does, but nobody ever admits. Instead, tourists take the pictures of this dark hall, listen to water dripping from the ceiling and to gloomy classical music playing here to acquire a stronger effect. In fact, the hall is impressive enough even when there’s no music playing.
Now, imagine an enormous tank in which a few palace halls can fit. Inside of it stand Greek columns, whereas on its walls are church marks from Byzantium times. Later, when there was lack of water in Constantinople, city administration ingeniously decided to sink the temple. Hence, it slowly sank underground without losing the water inside of it, for its stone floor had been made finely impermeable to water. Locals only had to cover the walls with stone – and here is your actual huge water-storage!
The whole thing was called as a "cistern".
In brighter years, the cisterns were filled with water almost to their ceiling. Thus, the place where tourists look at the hall from was normally under water. Neither music, not tourists ever got here, those times... Turks did not change anything about the cisterns. So, water was stored here for hundreds of years till it appeared to them that antique monuments are good to make money on them attracting tourists. Then Turks drained the temple and started taking care of it. The latter thing was done perfectly whereas the former was not hundred per cent completed.
There is still one-metre thick water layer on the temple floor. Look at the pictures; you see these long dark stains in the water? It’s carps! This big fish has been placed here recently to sort of bring life to the water storage.
Not only did Turks preserve the tank, but they modernized it as well. For instance, they noticed that some columns are in a bad condition and are about to collapse. Then, Turks found the weakest points of such columns, and barely hit them. When the columns were about to fall, Turks put large stones under them to retain stability. Needless to say, that was a very dangerous procedure.
Still, Muslim Turks did not do anything with the Medusa heads. These are not visible being under water in any case, Turks thought...
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