the stones were treated as mere rubble to be reused in a setting not originally intended to be viewed by visitors. In popular culture The cistern was used as a location for the 1963 James Bond film From Russia with Love. In the film, it is referred to as having been constructed by the Emperor Constantine, with no reference to Justinian, and is fictitiously located under the Soviet consulate. In reality it is a long way away from the former Soviet (now Russian) consulate in Beyoğlu. The cistern plays a key role in Dorothy Dunnett's historical novel Pawn in Frankincense (1969), fourth volume of The Lymond Chronicles. In the fantasy series The Old Kingdom, the reservoir beneath the palace in Belisaere was inspired by the cistern. The finale of the 2009 film The International takes place in a fantasy amalgam of the Old City, depicting the Basilica Cistern as lying beneath the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, which, in the film, is directly adjacent to the Süleymaniye Mosque. In the 2011 video game, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, the player-controlled character, Ezio Auditore, is given the chance to explore a section of this cistern in a memory sequence entitled The Yerebatan Cistern. The cistern also features in Jean-Baptiste Andrea's film thriller Brotherhood of Tears (2013). In the sequence, the lead character, acting as a transporter (played by Jeremie Renier), delivers a suitcase to a mysterious client (played by Turkish actor Ali Pinar). The cistern with its inverted Medusa pillar featured in the 2013 Dan Brown novel Inferno (as well as its 2016 film adaptation). Gallery See also Cistern of Philoxenos (Istanbul) Theodosius Cistern (Istanbul) List of Roman cisterns History of Roman and Byzantine domes References Further reading External links Byzantium 1200 | Basilica Cistern 6th-century religious buildings and structures Byzantine secular architecture Roman cisterns Cisterns in Istanbul Reservoirs in Turkey Tourist attractions in Istanbul 6th century in the Byzantine Empire Fatih Cultural depictions of Medusa