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Constantinople [a] (see other names) was a historical city located on the Bosporus that served as the capital of the Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman empires between its consecration in 330 until 1930, when it was renamed to Istanbul.
The origins of Byzantium are shrouded in legend. Tradition says that Byzas of Megara (a city-state near Athens) founded the city when he sailed northeast across the Aegean Sea. The date is usually given as 667 BC on the authority of Herodotus, who states the city was founded 17 years after Chalcedon.
After conquering the city, Mehmed II made Constantinople the new Ottoman capital, replacing Adrianople. The fall of Constantinople and of the Byzantine Empire was a watershed of the Late Middle Ages, marking the effective end of the Roman Empire, a state which began in roughly 27 BC and had lasted nearly 1500 years.
An Israeli airstrike has destroyed an Ottoman-era building just a stone's throw from the UNESCO-listed temples of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, the closest Israel has come yet to striking one of ...
Throughout the Middle Ages, Constantinople was a kind of "workshop of splendor" for the countries of Europe and the East. In many cities and at almost all courts, silk and wool fabrics, expensive clothes, leather, ceramics and glassware, jewelry and church ornaments, cold weapons and military ammunition (especially belonging to the category of ...
During most of the Middle Ages, the latter part of the Byzantine era, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city on the European continent and at times the largest in the world. [ 53 ] [ 54 ] Constantinople is generally considered to be the center and the "cradle of Orthodox Christian civilization ".
After the Ottoman conquest, the walls were maintained until the 1870s, when most were demolished to facilitate the expansion of the city. [220] Today only the Galata Tower, visible from most of historical Constantinople, remains intact, along with several smaller fragments. [156]
During this period, the Ottoman authorities sought prominent Greeks from all over Constantinople: in government service, in the Orthodox Church, or members of prominent families and put them to death by hanging or beheading. [22] In addition, several hundred Greek merchants in the city were also massacred. [23] [24]