Sultanahmet Square sits on the bones of one of the ancient world's great sporting arenas. For nearly a thousand years, the Byzantine Hippodrome here could pack in 100,000 spectators for chariot races and political spectacles. The Roman emperors who built it looted obelisks from Egypt and a bronze column from Delphi to adorn its spine. Those monuments still stand in the square today, battered but unmistakable.

Then the Ottomans arrived. Sultan Ahmed I was nineteen years old when he decided to build a mosque on the Hippodrome's flank. In 1898, Kaiser Wilhelm II added his own monument: a fountain, built in Germany and shipped over in pieces as a diplomatic gift with an ulterior motive.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use the square to trace three empires in a single walk, explaining why each dynasty felt compelled to leave its mark on exactly this spot.