The Prison of Anemas

Istanbul · Turkiet · Prison

In the forty pits the walls were too narrow to climb — the dungeon carries the name of the man who was nearly blinded here.

Beneath the walls of the Blachernae Palace in Ayvansaray lies the city's only surviving underground prison: tunnels, labyrinthine cisterns, and the forty rooms — torture pits so narrow and deep that anyone thrown into them, the legend says, never climbed out but died down there. The name comes from Michael Anemas, an officer of Arab descent seized in 1107 for a conspiracy against Emperor Alexios and shut in the tower above. He was to have his eyes put out, but the emperor's daughter Anna intervened and stopped the punishment. After him princes and even emperors of the Komnenos and Palaiologos houses were brought down here. The vaults stand empty today, and sound carries astonishingly far. The stairs down are steep and worn smooth by feet.

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Wo befindet sich The Prison of Anemas?

The Prison of Anemas liegt in Istanbul, Turkiet.