page_title: Cistern of Aetius
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Cistern of Aetius / History
caption_attribution_description: English: vefastadi1
context_page_description: The Cistern of Aetius was an important Byzantine water reservoir in the city of Constantinople. Once one of the largest Byzantine cisterns, it is now a football stadium in Istanbul. Since 1928 it has been known as Karagümrük stadyumu, 'Karagümrük stadium' or Vefa stadyumu, 'Vefa stadium', while in the Ottoman period it was known as the Turkish: Çukurbostan, lit. 'sunken garden'.
context_section_description: Although according to a late tradition, the erection of the cistern, which lay in the fourteenth region of Constantinople, dates back to the reign of Emperor Valens (r. 364–78), it is ascertained that it was built in 421 by Aetius, praefectus urbi in Constantinople in 419 and praefectus praetorio Orientis in 425, under Emperor Theodosius II (r. 408–50). The cistern was confused in scholarship for a long time with the cistern of Bonus or with that of Aspar: only in recent times has its identification become certain. The giant tank was oriented parallel to one branch of the Mese, the main road of the city which connected the Gate of Charisios with the center of the city passing near the Church of the Holy Apostles, and was supplied by the water main connected to the Valens Aqueduct. Due to its huge dimensions, in the Byzantine age the reservoir was often used as reference point to locate other buildings, like the monasteries of Prodomos of Petra, of the Romans (Greek: τὰ Ρωμαίου) and of Mara (Greek: τὰ Μάρα).
  After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the 16th-century French traveller Pierre Gilles reported that around 1540 the reservoir was already empty.  In the Ottoman period, as its Turkish name Çukurbostan ("hollow garden") betrays, the structure was used as vegetable garden.
  Since the 1920s the structure has been turned into a sports ground, and since 1928 it hosts a football stadium, the Karagümrük (or Vefa, from the Vefa S.K. football team) stadium, which is the home stadium of Fatih Karagümrük SK team.
caption: The Karagümrük Stadium seen from the west. Behind the trees it is possible to see the remains of the walls of the Cistern.
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