Serpent Column (Delphi)

The Serpent Column was an ancient bronze monument originally erected at Delphi, Greece, in 478 BCE. It was created by the victorious Greek city-states to celebrate their defeat of the Persian Empire at the Battle of Plataea. It originally held a golden tripod atop the intertwined heads of three serpents.

The monument is no longer in Greece; it is famously located in the Hippodrome of Constantinople in modern-day Istanbul, Turkey. It was moved there by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine the Great in the 4th century CE to decorate his new capital. It remains one of the oldest surviving Greek monuments in the city.

The column was originally a massive, 8-meter-tall golden tripod supported by the intertwined, spiraling bodies of three bronze serpents. Today, only the lower intertwined coils and a fragment of one head survive. The heads were famously smashed off during the medieval period.

The three serpent heads were intact until the early 18th century, when they were reportedly smashed off during a drunken rampage by a Polish diplomat. One of the damaged upper jaws was later recovered and is now on display at the Istanbul Archaeology Museums. The rest of the bronze heads were lost to history.