3D print the Basilica Cistern
A free, printable 3D model of the small vaulted structure at the Basilica Cistern site in Istanbul, with the surrounding streets and buildings built from real map data in your browser.
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The model you print
Basilica Cistern in 3D
The landmark on its own, at its size on a 160 mm print. Print friendly thickens thin parts for a 0.4 mm nozzle; Full detail keeps every part.
- On a 160 mm print
- 3 mm
- Scale
- 1:3,750
3 mm tall on a 160 mm print
Make this print opens the generator on a 600 m square around the landmark. Buildings print at close to true scale, so the landmark grows with the print size.
- A small, low block
The model is a little vaulted structure only a few millimetres tall, so its arched front and slender columns are the parts to watch. Print it larger, or at 0.12–0.16 mm layers, to keep them crisp.
- One piece with the ground
The Basilica Cistern is joined to the ground in the exported file, and the four-side check found no floating parts, so nothing needs gluing.
- Pick the detail for your nozzle
In the Buildings settings, set Landmark detail to Print friendly to adapt thin parts and small details to the print scale. Full detail keeps every modeled feature, for larger prints or a finer nozzle.
- Colors
Buildings, roads, water and ground arrive as separate filament slots in the 3MF. The Basilica Cistern takes the building color.
- File format
You get a 3MF for Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer or PrusaSlicer. Any of them can save it as STL if you need one.
About the Basilica Cistern
Of the several hundred ancient cisterns under Istanbul, in Türkiye, the Basilica Cistern is the largest. It lies southwest of the Hagia Sophia, about 150 meters (490 ft) away, on the peninsula of Sarayburnu, and dates from the 6th century, built under the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. Its name refers to the Stoa Basilica, the large public square above it on the First Hill of Constantinople. The chamber is kept with little water so that visitors can walk through it.
The underground room measures about 138 meters (453 ft) by 65 meters (213 ft), roughly 9,800 square meters (105,000 sq ft), and could hold 80,000 cubic meters (2,800,000 cubic feet) of water. Its ceiling rests on 336 marble columns, each 9 meters (30 ft) tall, in 12 rows of 28 columns set 5 meters (16 ft) apart; most have Ionic or Corinthian capitals, and a few are Doric. Many of the columns seem to have been reused from older buildings, and they are cut from several kinds of marble and granite.
Two column bases in the northwest corner are carved with the face of Medusa, and where they came from is unknown. Fifty-two stone steps lead down into the cistern, which is ringed by a firebrick wall 4 meters (13 ft) thick. Its water arrived from the Belgrad Forest, 19 kilometers (12 mi) north, by way of the Valens Aqueduct. Local people kept drawing water from the chamber after everyone else had forgotten it, until the French traveler Petrus Gyllius described it in 1565; a restoration in 1985–1987 removed over 50,000 tons of mud and opened the chamber as a museum in 1987.
About this model
The Basilica Cistern is one of more than 4,900 landmark models in Mini Skyline. They are made with AI, and each one is checked from four sides in its real surroundings before release. Everything around it is built from OpenStreetMap and Overture map data. If you would rather print the shape from map data, turn off Landmark models in the Buildings settings.
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