Sulthanamet Square in Istanbul hosts part of one of the most important monuments survived from ancient times: the trophy of the battle of Platea.

The part which is now in front of the Blue Mosque, is the column, while the base of the monument is still in Delphi.

On this column there is a greek inscription, dated around 480 BCE, which lists the names of the cities taking part in the war against the Persian Empire. The column itself was in fact probably taken from the Persians as part of the booty of the battle and then dedicated in the panhellenic sanctuary. It was customary to gift to the gods a tenth of the booty and this column was part of this donation.

The Persian wars had been won by the small Greek Cities in league against the overwhelming power of the Persian Empire and this was a collective achievement of unprecedented importance.

This column became a landmark because it marked a deed of such importance and probably also for this reason, Constantine decided at the beginning of the 4th century CE, almost a thousand years later to move it to his newly build capital of the Roman Empire, Constantinople. He took the column, but the base stayed there in Delphi.

In Constantinople the column was placed in the hippodrome, a place of extreme importance for the city.

Later on, probably just after 1700, the three snake heads where removed during the night from a group of drunk soldiers.

What we now have is the column shaft, but we don’t know what the trophy looked like through ages in the different phases of its history. We have some images from ancient books in which the column is represented and we know that it had three snake heads, one of which was probably found during excavations.

Archeologists and historians have tried to give several possible hypothesis for the first shape of this monument, based on the information we have from ancient sources. One possibility is that the three heads held a large vase on top of them, or alternatively three long legs could be holding on the top part and the column would have been only a central stand, as in a typical Delphic tripod. We will probably never know.

Moreover, the base which was in a first time thought to be the one on which the column stood was not the right one, and it is much more likely, as scholars demonstrated that another base, found in Delphi, held the column.

The so called Serpentine column continued to have a role in history during the Byzantine and Ottoman periods and was a fountain as well as a magical monument keeping snakes out of the city.

The number of problems opened by this monument are many, as the problems opened by the list of names on the column.

The history of a monument with its inscription can be extremely long and complex and this example is one for which we have quite a lot of evidence from which we can figure out good questions and plausible solutions.