At the Hippodrome

The magnificent four horses that once crowned Constantinople’s enormous chariot circuit have seen 2,000 years of history pass before them. By Jeremy James A cool breeze blew through the old Hippodrome, the At Meydani: a fair wind for horses in the summer; keep them aired, keep the sweat off, keep the flies down. It’s hard to see these days what the At Meydani must have been like in its heyday, under Byzantine rule. It’s hard enough to see what it must have been like under Ottoman rule. The At Meydani runs alongside the Blue Mosque of Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I, which is within sight of the great Byzantine Ayasofya, a mosque these days, which has a deep and ancient feel to it, very different from Sultan Ahmed. But as for the Hippodrome, the At Meydani, if you didn’t know that it once was a celebrated arena for horse and chariot races you’d walk straight through it. It’s ringed by a road, planted with chestnuts, plane trees, palms and I saw a wisteria tumbling through a conker tree – it was early summer when I was there. The place was full of touts and tourists, seagulls and pigeons but then it ever was. It has always been a place where people have gone for their entertainment. And places where a lot of people congregate, so do food vendors, and where food vendors go, if it’s anywhere near the sea, seagulls follow. And pigeons go anywhere there’s a crowd. continue