Constantinople
Constantinople, the modern Istanbul, was the capital of the Roman and Byzantine Empire from 330 until its takeover by the Ottoman Empire in 1453. After this, it continued to function as the Ottoman capital until the abolition of the Ottoman sultanate in 1922. It was located at the core of the modern city of Istanbul, on a peninsula at the southeastern tip of Thrace in Europe; with the Bosporus strait and the ancient cities of Chalcedon and Chrysopolis in Bithynia, Anatolia (Asia Minor) to the east; the Golden Horn and the citadel of Galata (Pera) to the north; the Sea of Marmara to the south; and the Princes' Islands to the southeast.
Constantinople was founded on the site of the existing city of Byzantium in 324, during the reign of Constantine the Great, initially as New Rome. In 330 it became the new capital of the Roman Empire, and continued in that role after the empire was divided in an Eastern and Western half and after the Western Roman Empire ended in the 5th century. The ascendancy of Constantinople marks the empire's "Byzantine" era.
From the mid-5th century to the early 13th century, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe. The city became famous for its architectural masterpieces, such as Hagia Sophia, the cathedral of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which served as the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate; the Imperial Palace of the emperors; the Hippodrome; the Golden Gate of the Land Walls; and opulent aristocratic palaces. The University of Constantinople was founded in the 5th century and included a vast Imperial Library, which contained more than 100,000 volumes.
Constantinople was famous for its massive and complex fortifications, which ranked among the most sophisticated defensive architecture of antiquity; the Theodosian Walls consisted of a double wall lying about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) to the west of the first wall and a moat with palisades in front. Constantinople's location between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara reduced the land area that required defensive walls. The city was constructed intentionally to rival Rome, and it was claimed that several elevations within its walls matched Rome's seven hills. The impenetrable defenses enclosed magnificent palaces, domes, and towers, the result of the prosperity Constantinople achieved as the gateway between two continents (Europe and Asia) and two seas (the Mediterranean and the Black Sea). Although besieged on numerous occasions by various armies, the defenses of Constantinople proved impenetrable for nearly nine hundred years.
In 1204, during the Fourth Crusade, the city was sacked by the Latin Crusaders and became the capital of the short-lived Latin Empire (1204–1261). The Byzantine Empire of Nicaea recaptured the city in 1261. Under the following Palaiologan dynasty it enjoyed a partial recovery. With the advent of the Ottoman Empire in 1299, the empire's territories dwindled, and the city began to lose population. By the early 15th century, the empire was reduced to just Constantinople and its environs, along with the territories of the despotate of Morea, in Peloponnese, Greece, making it an enclave inside the Ottoman Empire. The city was finally besieged and conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1453. It served as the Ottoman capital until the empire's dissolution and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, when the capital was moved to Ankara. Now known internationally under its modern Turkish name Istanbul, it has become the most populous city in Europe, with a population of more than 16 million residents, and the economic and financial centre of Turkey, straddling the Bosporus strait and lying in both Europe and Asia.
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