This is an obelisk at the Hippodrome in Istanbul, as you can see it is not smooth, this is because the outer layer was removed and used for other things (weapons mostly).
Here is another obelisk in the Hippodrome, and sorry about them being on a lean I didn't rotate the picture lol sorry.
Again the striped obelisk
Mainly I put this in as you can see that this column is well below ground level, this is because when it was built that was ground level and as with most cities that are built layer upon layer this is the case here with ground level slowly rising over the years.
Here is the top of the column, it is made of bronze. The column was made following a battle that the Turks won and was made from the melted weapons that were collected from the battle field, at one point there were serpent heads at the top as it is two serpents coiled together, but the heads have since come off though it is not know what happened to them.
