Three names for one city with a prestigious destiny. Embark on a journey to explore the ancient wonders of Constantinople, a city with a unique and fascinating history. From the Greek city of Byzantium to the opulent medieval Constantinople, before it became Istanbul, experience the tumultuous history of a city that has fascinated the world for more than a millennium.
Byzantium, a Greek city with a significant role.
In the first half of the 7th century BCE, Doric Greek colonists, likely from Megara, founded a new city on the European coast of the Bosphorus Strait. It was named Byzantium after a legendary figure, Byzas. While the site had been occupied long before this event, it marked Byzantium’s entry into history.
Its privileged position on the Bosphorus ensured significant prosperity. It could control the traffic of ships carrying wheat from the Pontus Euxinus (the ancient name for the Black Sea) to the Mediterranean and became one of the foremost ports in the Greek world. This advantageous situation led to Athens and Sparta vying for alliance with Byzantium, and to rulers seeking to conquer Greece wanting to control it.
Though details of its history are scant, its political role was significant, and it was a focal point in many conflicts: it was taken twice on behalf of the Persians during the Persian Wars, before the Spartan Pausanias took it after 478 BCE. Subsequently, Byzantium fell under Athenian influence. Revolting against them along with Samos, it was subdued by a siege in 439 BCE. Then, during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, it was subject to one camp or the other depending on the vicissitudes of the conflict.
Returning under Athenian domination, it finally gained independence in 364 BCE. But Philip II of Macedonia attempted to seize it in 340 BCE. He failed due to the intervention of an Athenian general. However, under the reign of Alexander the Great, Byzantium was forced to recognize Macedonian suzerainty. It regained its independence under his successors but faced invasion by the Gauls in 279 BCE and conflict with Rhodes, a major power at the time.
Ultimately, Byzantium fell under Roman control.
Constantinople, the New Rome, and the Byzantine era.
Its destiny radically changed in 330 CE when Constantine decided to establish his capital there. The city, refounded as Constantinople, became the New Rome. Endowed with monuments befitting a capital, the city became for a millennium the heart of the Byzantine Empire, a major center of Christianity, and one of the greatest cities of its time. Its formidable fortifications, hundreds of churches including Hagia Sophia and the Church of the Holy Apostles, sumptuous palaces, civic monuments, and flourishing industries ensured it a unique prestige and radiance.
But the city was not spared vicissitudes: revolts, earthquakes, sieges, and fires transformed it over the centuries, following or marking the tumultuous history of the Byzantine Empire. In 1203-1204, the diversion of the Fourth Crusade and the foundation of a brief Latin Empire constituted a rupture from which the Byzantine Empire, even though it reclaimed Constantinople, never fully recovered. The following two centuries, under the Palaiologos dynasty, were culturally brilliant but saw the empire gradually decline, both under external pressures and due to civil wars, internal conflicts, and the impact of the Black Death.
The journey to Istanbul, capital of the Ottomans and of modern Turkey.
In 1453, Mehmed II conquered the city and made it the capital of the Ottoman Empire. The city entered its third age and, from an ancient Christian and medieval city, became a Turkish and Muslim metropolis dominating a vast empire. Constantinople – or according to its Turkish name, Istanbul, which became the sole usage from 1930 – was profoundly remodeled over the following centuries. Traditional Byzantine centers of power were abandoned in favor of the Topkapi Palace. The sultans covered the city with numerous monuments, many churches were converted into mosques or destroyed to build other monuments. Earthquakes and modernity also took their toll. In 1871, a railway line was built to the heart of the historic city, cutting through the remains of many Byzantine monuments: part of the maritime walls, the Bucoleon Palace, or the Mangana Palace were thus destroyed.
Today, while Istanbul still retains iconic monuments from its past, much of its architecture, even the most prestigious that adorned it during antiquity and the Middle Ages, has disappeared over the centuries. Today, the challenge is immense to preserve the remaining heritage, confronted with multiple risks: the conversion of Hagia Sophia and the former Church of the Pammakaristos into mosques, mass tourism, pollution, rampant urbanization, and moreover, the risk of a major earthquake, very high in Istanbul at present.
However, many discoveries remain to be made, not only concerning its surviving ancient and medieval monuments, whose every secret has not been unveiled, but also in its subsoil. While excavations and studies punctuated the 20th century, the archaeological potential of the city remains considerable, emerging here and there through research and construction sites. However, the archaeological challenge no longer concerns just the heart of Istanbul itself: the urban pressure exerted by this metropolis of over ten million inhabitants jeopardizes numerous archaeological sites of varying sizes throughout its metropolitan region, and is rarely a priority for local authorities.