Constantinople
Capital of the Eastern Roman and Ottoman empires / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Constantinople[lower-alpha 1] (see other names) became the capital of the Roman Empire during the reign of Constantine the Great in 330. Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century, Constantinople remained the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire (also known as the Byzantine Empire; 330–1204 and 1261–1453), the Latin Empire (1204–1261), and the Ottoman Empire (1453–1922). Following the Turkish War of Independence, the Turkish capital then moved to Ankara. Officially renamed Istanbul in 1930, the city is today the largest city in Europe, straddling the Bosporus strait and lying in both Europe and Asia, and the financial centre of Turkey.
Constantinople was founded on the former site of the Greek colony of Byzantion, which today is known as Istanbul in Turkey. Show map of Istanbul | |
Location | Fatih and Beyoğlu, Istanbul, Turkey |
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Region | Marmara Region |
Coordinates | 41°00′45″N 28°58′48″E |
Type | Imperial city |
Part of | |
Area | 6 km2 (2.3 sq mi) enclosed within Constantinian Walls 14 km2 (5.4 sq mi) enclosed within Theodosian Walls |
History | |
Builder | Constantine the Great |
Founded | 11 May 330 |
Periods | Late antiquity to Late Middle Ages |
Cultures | |
Events | Sieges of Constantinople, including fall of the city (1204 and 1453) |
Official name | Historic Areas of Istanbul |
Type | Cultural |
Criteria | (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) |
Designated | 1985 (9th session) |
Reference no. | 356bis |
Extension | 2017 |
Area | 765.5 ha |
UNESCO region | Europe and North America |
Timeline of Constantinople | |
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Capital of the Byzantine Empire 395–1204 AD; 1261–1453 AD
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In 324, after the Western and Eastern Roman Empires were reunited, the ancient city of Byzantium was selected to serve as the new capital of the Roman Empire, and the city was renamed Nova Roma, or 'New Rome', by Emperor Constantine the Great. On 11 May 330, it was renamed Constantinople and dedicated to Constantine.[6] Constantinople is generally considered to be the center and the "cradle of Orthodox Christian civilization".[7][8] From the mid-5th century to the early 13th century, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe.[9] 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 sacred Imperial Palace, where the emperors lived; the Hippodrome; the Golden Gate of the Land Walls; and opulent aristocratic palaces. The University of Constantinople was founded in the 5th century and contained artistic and literary treasures before it was sacked in 1204 and 1453,[10] including its vast Imperial Library which contained the remnants of the Library of Alexandria and had 100,000 volumes.[11] The city was the home of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and guardian of Christendom's holiest relics such as the Crown of thorns and the True Cross.
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.[12] Constantinople's location between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara reduced the land area that needed defensive walls. The city was built intentionally to rival Rome, and it was claimed that several elevations within its walls matched Rome's 'seven hills'.[13] The impenetrable defenses enclosed magnificent palaces, domes, and towers, the result of 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, however, the armies of the Fourth Crusade took and devastated the city, and for several decades, its inhabitants resided under Latin occupation in a dwindling and depopulated city. In 1261 the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos liberated the city, and after the restoration under the Palaiologos dynasty, it enjoyed a partial recovery. With the advent of the Ottoman Empire in 1299, the Byzantine Empire began to lose territories, and the city began to lose population. By the early 15th century, the Byzantine Empire was reduced to just Constantinople and its environs, along with Morea in Greece, making it an enclave inside the Ottoman Empire. The city was finally besieged and conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1453, remaining under its control until the early 20th century, after which it was renamed Istanbul under the Empire's successor state, Turkey.
Before Constantinople
According to Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, the first known name of a settlement on the site of Constantinople was Lygos,[14] a settlement likely of Thracian origin founded between the 13th and 11th centuries BC.[15] The site, according to the founding myth of the city, was abandoned by the time Greek settlers from the city-state of Megara founded Byzantium (Ancient Greek: Βυζάντιον, Byzántion) in around 657 BC,[16] across from the town of Chalcedon on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus.
The origins of the name of Byzantion, more commonly known by the later Latin Byzantium, are not entirely clear, though some suggest it is of Thracian origin.[17][18] The founding myth of the city has it told that the settlement was named after the leader of the Megarian colonists, Byzas. The later Byzantines of Constantinople themselves would maintain that the city was named in honor of two men, Byzas and Antes, though this was more likely just a play on the word Byzantion.[19]
The city was briefly renamed Augusta Antonina in the early 3rd century AD by the Emperor Septimius Severus (193–211), who razed the city to the ground in 196 for supporting a rival contender in the civil war and had it rebuilt in honor of his son Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (who succeeded him as Emperor), popularly known as Caracalla.[19][20] The name appears to have been quickly forgotten and abandoned, and the city reverted to Byzantium/Byzantion after either the assassination of Caracalla in 217 or, at the latest, the fall of the Severan dynasty in 235.
Names of Constantinople
Byzantium took on the name of Constantinople (Greek: Κωνσταντινούπολις, romanized: Kōnstantinoupolis; "city of Constantine") after its refoundation under Roman emperor Constantine I, who transferred the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium in 330 and designated his new capital officially as Nova Roma (Νέα Ῥώμη) 'New Rome'. During this time, the city was also called 'Second Rome', 'Eastern Rome', and Roma Constantinopolitana (Latin for 'Constantinopolitan Rome').[18] As the city became the sole remaining capital of the Roman Empire after the fall of the West, and its wealth, population, and influence grew, the city also came to have a multitude of nicknames.
As the largest and wealthiest city in Europe during the 4th–13th centuries and a center of culture and education of the Mediterranean basin, Constantinople came to be known by prestigious titles such as Basileuousa (Queen of Cities) and Megalopolis (the Great City) and was, in colloquial speech, commonly referred to as just Polis (ἡ Πόλις) 'the City' by Constantinopolitans and provincial Byzantines alike.[21]
In the language of other peoples, Constantinople was referred to just as reverently. The medieval Vikings, who had contacts with the empire through their expansion in eastern Europe (Varangians), used the Old Norse name Miklagarðr (from mikill 'big' and garðr 'city'), and later Miklagard and Miklagarth.[19] In Arabic, the city was sometimes called Rūmiyyat al-Kubra (Great City of the Romans) and in Persian as Takht-e Rum (Throne of the Romans).
In East and South Slavic languages, including in Kievan Rus', Constantinople has been referred to as Tsargrad (Царьград) or Carigrad, 'City of the Caesar (Emperor)', from the Slavonic words tsar ('Caesar' or 'King') and grad ('city'). This was presumably a calque on a Greek phrase such as Βασιλέως Πόλις (Vasileos Polis), 'the city of the emperor [king]'.
In Persian the city was also called Asitane (the Threshold of the State), and in Armenian, it was called Gosdantnubolis (City of Constantine).[22]
Modern names of the city
The modern Turkish name for the city, İstanbul, derives from the Greek phrase eis tin Polin (εἰς τὴν πόλιν), meaning '(in)to the city'.[19][23] This name was used in colloquial speech in Turkish alongside Kostantiniyye, the more formal adaptation of the original Constantinople, during the period of Ottoman rule, while western languages mostly continued to refer to the city as Constantinople until the early 20th century. In 1928, the Turkish alphabet was changed from Arabic script to Latin script. After that, as part of the Turkification movement, Turkey started to urge other countries to use Turkish names for Turkish cities, instead of other transliterations to Latin script that had been used in Ottoman times and the city came to be known as Istanbul and its variations in most world languages.[24][25][26][27]
The name Constantinople is still used by members of the Eastern Orthodox Church in the title of one of their most important leaders, the Orthodox patriarch based in the city, referred to as "His Most Divine All-Holiness the Archbishop of Constantinople New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch". In Greece today, the city is still called Konstantinoúpoli(s) (Κωνσταντινούπολις/Κωνσταντινούπολη) or simply just "the City" (Η Πόλη).