The ancient buildings that have shape-shifted across centuries
in 1545, French physician Petrus Gyllius found a set of stairs disappearing beneath some ramshackle wooden buildings behind the city’s gigantic mosque, the Hagia Sophia. Following them down to 30 feet beneath the streets of Istanbul, he found a sunken palace and floated through its forest of 336 towering columns on a row boat. READ THE STORY ON CNN.COM/ STYLE ARCHITECTURE