You may have seen this fantastically decrepit house before. It’s a minor internet celebrity — not so much because of its old age (though roughly 1,800 years is nothing to sneeze at), but because its four floors correspond so neatly to four historical eras: from the Roman Empire at the bottom, through the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires in between, to the Turkish Republic on top.
Reddit user DanceWithMacaw recently color-coded each layer, better visualizing those layers of history, and in so doing also turning that picture into a map – of time rather than place. But let’s start with location, because that explains why history is layered so thickly here.
We’re in Istanbul, with 15 million inhabitants the largest city in Turkey, and indeed Europe. (Although that depends on whether you include Turkey wholly, partly, or not at all in Europe — each option has its fans and detractors).
