The Burnt Column (Çemberlitaş)

Look up and follow this column all the way to the top. It's made of drums of porphyry, the purple stone reserved for emperors, and it's held together by iron hoops like a barrel. It's known as the Burnt Column, and few monuments in the city have gathered more legends.

1The emperor as the sun

Constantine inaugurated it in 330, the same year he consecrated the city as the new capital. It stood at the centre of a circular forum. On top rose a bronze statue of the emperor himself, wearing a crown of sun rays in the manner of Apollo or Helios. With the statue, the monument reached nearly fifty metres.

2Relics beneath your feet

Byzantine chroniclers claim that a small shrine at the base held objects of enormous symbolic value.

According to tradition, it kept fragments of the crosses of the two thieves, the baskets from the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and even the Palladium, the protective statue that Aeneas was said to have brought from Troy to Rome.

It was a way of saying that Constantinople had inherited Rome's protection. The base has never been excavated to check.

3Wind, fire and iron

In 1106 a storm toppled the statue and three drums. The Ottomans added the hoops around 1515, hence its Turkish name, Çemberlitaş, "hooped stone". A fire in 1779 blackened it and earned it the nickname "burnt".

4What to look for

• The metal hoops, which hide the joints between the drums.
• The dark stains left by the fire of 1779.
• The masonry base, reinforced in Ottoman times.