Guide
The Rezan Has Museum opened in May 2007 with 'Timeless Simplicity', the opening exhibition of the 11th International Conference on Oriental Carpets, and has run original exhibitions and cultural events since. Its archaeological collection reaches back some 9,000 years, and in 2009 it took in documents and objects from the Cibali Tobacco Factory, the building complex the museum itself occupies.
The most unusual thing here is not in a case: the museum contains an 11th-century Byzantine water cistern. Cisterns were the underground masonry reservoirs that supplied Byzantine İstanbul, and this one — roughly square in plan, built of stone, flat brick and horasan mortar with reused material — has 48 arches, 15 piers and 20 columns. Its capitals are worth looking at closely: they run in different styles from the Early Byzantine period through to the 11th century. After the cistern stopped holding water it served as the tobacco store of the Cibali cigarette factory, and during the Second World War as a food store.
A second structure stands inside the exhibition area, in two blocks, thought to date from the 17th century. What it was finally used for is not known with certainty; the museum's own reading is that it had some function connected with water.
