Killing the Buddha

A picture I took of a cat inside the Hagia Sophia.

At BLDGBLOG, an alluring post about the liquid underbelly of a historic building.

While scuba diving beneath Hagia Sophia, an exploratory team led by filmmaker Goksel Gülensoy has “managed to reach areas that until now, no one had ever managed to reach,” down there in the flooded basins 1000 feet beneath Istanbul’s ancient religious structure. In the process, they have discovered 800-year old submerged graves containing the remains of “canonized children.”

This was part of a larger, underwater archaeo-spatial survey:

The divers and specialists explored the connection of the basins underneath Aghia Sophia with the aqueduct and the palace of Top Kapi. In addition they attempted to locate the secret tunnels from Tekfour Palace to the Islands.

Those “secret tunnels” are presumably the rumored subterranean extensions of the Anemas Dungeons – but who knows.

Either way, I have long been fascinated by the idea of scuba diving beneath – if not actually through – architectural structures, so I am definitely looking forward to watching Gülensoy’s forthcoming documentary about these discoveries. That film, appropriately enough entitled In the Depths of Hagia Sophia, will begin screening at film festivals this autumn.

BLDGBLOG: Scuba Diving Beneath Hagia Sophia.

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