So Auckland has a water shortage. Again. Hard to believe considering we have an average rainfall of 1,284mm per year, 14 water reservoirs capable of holding over 100 gigalitres (or 100 billion litres of water) plus a pipe spewing the stuff directly from the Waikato River. Sure, there may have been a touch less rain this year than normal (except whenever I plan a barbeque), but you wouldn’t exactly call New Zealand a dry country. Aotearoa isn’t called the ‘Land of the Long Parched Desert’ – it rains here heaps and that’s what makes our lawns green, our weeds grow and our sky grey all the damn time.
But they cut the essentials of life, that is; our car washes, our consistent with sound pools and our water games on the lawn, consistent with maybe we can turn to the ancient Romans looking for clues on how to solve this annoying problem. For example, Constantinople, known today as Istanbul, faces just over some of ours in precipitation, a depressing 747 mm consistent with the year. I cry more fluid than that in a single Warriors game!
Now, the ancient Byzantine capital not only had little rainfall, but also had a significant population of approximately 400,000 water consumers, even since the 6th century, which was long before the invention of these mega-crawlers of caterpillars. we depend today to make our water tanks. In addition, they also had the small challenge of being beserated by potential (and infrequently successful) attackers. Basically, this meant that the armies behaved like the thug waiting outdoors for the space of the wise child, so he can beat him when, in spite of everything, he was given. The army would park outside the city walls and cut off their food and water until the inhabitants, hopefully, surrendered.
But the Byzantine emperor Justinian I came up with an invention that solved all those disorders at once; Basilica cistern. Named because it is a synthetic garage tank and built on a site where a basilica (a multipurpose Roman civic construction) was located, the cistern is a massive underground tank of 138 mx 65 m capable of containing 80,000 m3 of water. Of course, it was not the only cistern in the city – there are loads around the city, most commonly to notice – but it was the largest and was designed to supply water to palaces and other vital constructions of the first hill of Constantinople. The cistern was filled with new water delivered through an aqueduct in the lush Belgrade forest about 20 km away and served as a convenient bulwark in front of very dry summers, long seating and exaggerated use of the personal jacuzzi.
The strangest thing about this ancient cathedral-shaped design is that, unlike virtually all the other featured icons, such as the Great Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, the Chrysler Building, etc., it’s underground! Which makes it a totally different experience. The first thing you notice is the fairly discreet street entrance, which looked more like the old public baths of Wellington’s Courtney Place than a world-class tourist destination; however, I think the Byzantines considered it little more than a public service at the time. After descending 50 odd steps, you reach a huge cave absolutely ruled by a total of 336 marble columns.
No doubt the classical scholars of your organization will temporarily realize that most of them are Corinthian and Ionic, although there are some Dorics to make sure you are alert. The explanation for why mixing is that everyone is recycled from various temples that had been looted in past invasions and no one on the structure team thought anyone would bother to return here. You can see all the columns thanks to the perfect lighting that, with the strange music they played when I was there, creates a rather strange atmosphere. But before you worry; The tank is no longer used as a reservoir, so the water point does not exceed 20 cm, which is enough to complete the experiment.
Of course, we are fortunate to be able to delight in the cistern and it was closed when the Byzantine emperors left the level of Constantinople they left some time before the Muslim conquest. And because he’s underground, everyone forgot about him. In all the excitement of moving out, Sultan Mehmed II (the conqueror) was distracted by the suspension of new curtains and the transfer of the electric power bill to his call which he overlooked to notice some of the utilities included in his new property. And so the Basilica Citerne remained out of sight, out of the brain until 1545, when Petrus Gyllius, a Dutch explorer, came here to claim a study work on Byzantine antiquities. Some locals told him about the dark holes in their basements where they can simply leave a line and locate a new bucket of water. Some said they even put fish in their basements!
In verifying these outlandish claims, Mr. Gyllis sneaked through the rubble until, despite everything, he made it triumphant after rediscovering the Basillica cistern. The istanbul local council was so happy with this change of occasions that they promptly designated this rare and ancient discovery as a sale and used as such for the next 440 years, even for corpses!
Fortunately, the explanation of why it prevailed in the past 1980s and the cistern was cleaned and opened so that we can all enjoy it. And who knows, perhaps some of the brilliant minds we have in our own civic water industries one day see it and realize that utilities can be more than just functional entities. Or at least find a way to prevent us from running out of bloody water in a rainy country like ours.