Serpent Column

Rest your hands on the iron railing and look down. The ground drops away into a shallow pit, and from it rises a dark, twisted shaft of bronze. It looks like a rope, or a corkscrew, or something grown rather than made. Around you, Sultanahmet Square fills with footsteps, tour-group chatter, and the call of a simit seller. This green-brown coil is older than almost anything else you can see from here.

This is the Serpent Column. It is made of three bronze snakes, wound tightly around one another, their bodies spiralling upward together. Today it ends in a blunt, broken top. Once, three serpent heads fanned outward at the summit. On those heads rested a golden bowl, raised high above a sanctuary in Greece. The column has stood here for well over sixteen centuries, and it was already old when it arrived.

To understand it, we need to travel west, to Delphi. In the ancient Greek world, Delphi was the sanctuary of the god Apollo and home to his famous oracle. In 479 BCE, an alliance of Greek city-states defeated a Persian army at the Battle of Plataea. That victory helped end the Persian invasions of Greece. To thank Apollo, the allies dedicated a monument at Delphi. This bronze coil is what survives of it.

The ancient historian Herodotus tells us the offering was paid for from a tenth of the spoils taken from the Persians. Many writers have repeated a more vivid version — that the bronze itself was melted down from captured Persian weapons and armour. That is a lovely idea, and it may hold some truth. But treat it with a little caution. What Herodotus clearly describes is a golden tripod standing on a bronze serpent of three heads.

Here is the first detail most visitors walk straight past. The coils carry an inscription. Engraved on the lower turns of the snakes is a list of the Greek city-states that fought against Persia. Athens and Sparta are there, along with Corinth and many smaller communities. Thirty-one names in all. It is a little like a war memorial carved with the names of nations rather than soldiers. The letters are faint and worn, so you will need patience to spot them.

The golden bowl did not last long. In the fourth century BCE, during a conflict known as the Third Sacred War, the Phocians — a people from central Greece — seized Delphi and its treasures. They stripped the gold to pay their armies. The bronze serpents were left behind. Centuries later, the Greek travel writer Pausanias visited Delphi and noted that only the bronze base remained.

Now comes the journey east. In the early fourth century, the Roman emperor Constantine the Great refounded the old city of Byzantium as his new capital, Constantinople. He wanted it to look like the heart of an empire. So he gathered statues and monuments from across the Greek and Roman world. The Serpent Column was carried here from Delphi. It was set up in the Hippodrome, the vast chariot-racing stadium that once filled this square.

Look along the line of monuments around you. To one side stands the Egyptian obelisk of Theodosius on its carved marble base. On the other side rises the rough stone shaft known as the Walled Obelisk. All three stood along the spina, the central barrier that racing chariots thundered around. The racetrack is gone, but its long oval shape still shapes the square. Your feet are walking on the old line of the track.

Why is the column sunk in a pit? Here is the second surprise. You are not standing on Byzantine ground. Over many centuries, rubble, soil and new building raised the level of the city by several metres. The pit shows you roughly where the Hippodrome floor once lay. When you look down at the base of the column, you are looking into the Constantinople of the emperors.

After the Ottoman conquest in 1453, the column took on new stories. One popular legend says that Sultan Mehmed the Second, the conqueror of the city, struck one of the serpent heads with his mace and broke off its jaw. Other local tales described the column as a talisman that kept snakes away from the city. These are folk stories, not records, but they show how the bronze snakes stayed alive in people's imaginations.

The heads themselves did survive, at least in part, until around the end of the seventeenth century. Then they broke away, and the circumstances are still unclear. One piece of an upper jaw was later recovered. Today it is kept in the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, a short walk from here near Topkapı Palace. If you visit, look for it. Seeing that small bronze fragment, with its open mouth, makes this headless column suddenly come to life.

For a long time, the lower coils were buried under the risen ground. In the mid-nineteenth century, excavations cleared the earth around the base. That work exposed the ancient inscription again and confirmed that this really was the offering from Delphi. It is one of the rare cases where a monument described by ancient writers can still be seen, and its written names can still be read.

Take a moment to walk slowly around the railing. Notice how the colour changes as you move. In places the bronze is dark and almost black. In others it carries a green and brown patina, the natural skin that bronze grows over centuries of air and rain. Watch the coils — they twist upward in a steady rhythm, and each serpent body swells and narrows as it turns.

So here it is. A thank-offering made by Greeks who had just survived an invasion. Stripped of its gold, carried across the sea by an emperor, wrapped in sultans' legends, half buried and dug out again. Before you walk on, look once more at the broken top, and picture three heads and a golden bowl against the sky. Then look around at the square. The voices and footsteps around you are the newest layer of a very long story.