Milion

The Milion Stone, Turkish Milyon Tasi, was both a monument and the zero-point of all roads in the Eastern Roman Empire. Erected in the early 4th century by Constantine in the new capital, it mirrored Rome's Milliarium Aureum: distances to every important city in the empire were measured from here. The tetrapylon disappeared in the Middle Ages, and a single pier fragment was only re-identified near Hagia Sophia in the 1960s. Today the two-metre-high stub stands in a modest glass case at the edge of Sultanahmet Square, overlooked by most visitors. Finding it means standing at the symbolic heart of an empire condensed into a single block.