Aqueduct Of Valens

Lonely Planet review

Rising majestically over the traffic on busy Atatürk Bulvarı, this limestone structure is one of the city's most distinctive landmarks. Visitors often gasp in amazement on seeing it for the first time (amazement often turns into consternation when they notice excited fans from the nearby Vefa football stadium doing perilous victory dances waving their team's colours from its dizzy heights).

We don't know for sure that that the aqueduct was constructed by the Emperor Valens (r 364-78), but we do know that it has been repaired a number of times, the first in 1019 and the last in the late 1980s. It's thought that the aqueduct carried water over this valley to a cistern at Beyazıt Square before finally ending up at the Great Byzantine Palace. After the Conquest it supplied the Eski (Old) and Topkapı Palaces with water.