Constantinople (Latin: Greek Constantinopolis , : Κωνσταντινούπολις - Konstantinoupolis ) is the old name of the current town of Istanbul in Turkey. Its original name, Byzance ( Byzantion in Greek, but meaning “shore” in thrace), remains largely used.

The inhabitants of Byzance are the Byzantine and those of Constantinople the Constantinopolitains (in Latin Constantinopolitanibus which wants to say “to the inhabitants of Constantinople” east one of the longest words of this language). Constantinople is the Francization of Konstantinoupolis , which, in Greek, means the town of Constantin . This name was given to him in homage to the Roman Emperor Constantin I {{er}}, which chooses to make of it the capital of the empire from 330. The Souda gives for the entry “Constantinople” (Κ, 2287):

“Constantinople exceeds all the other cities as much that Rome exceeds it; and the second place behind Rome appears much more appreciable to me than to be named first of all the others.
Three hundred and sixty years passed for old Rome since the reign of Auguste Caesar, and the end of its days was already in sight when Constantin the son of Constant seized the sceptre and founded the Rome news. ”

History of the city

Foundation at the time justinienne

Constantinople is built on a defensive natural site which makes it practically impregnable whereas Rome is unceasingly under the threat of the German ones. It is also close to the borders of the the Danube and the Euphrate where military operations to contain Persians and Goths are most important. It is finally located in the middle of the grounds of old Hellenic civilization. Between the 8 and on November 13rd, 324, Constantin devotes new city, by tracing a new perimeter which gives him a surface three to four times higher than that of old Byzance. Work starts at once and, on May 11th, 330, the new capital, designed like a " Rome" news; , is inaugurated. Constantin 1st builds it on the model of Rome with seven urban hills, fourteen areas, a Capitole, a forum, a Senate, a racecourse, stores, aqueducts, cisterns, running water and mains drainage… In the first times, it allows the establishment of pagan temples but very quickly the city becomes almost exclusively Christian and comprises only Christian religious buildings.

In a few decades, the city becomes one of the largest metropolises of the Roman East thanks to its political role and to its economic activities and the imperial financial incentives. In 332, Constantin ensures corn the free supply of the people of the new capital. In 334 the architects and the craftsmen of the building of the city are exempted certain loads, those which make build houses are entitled to free breads. The land great landowners of Asia Mineure have the obligation to build a house in the city. Of died of Constantin, certain contemporaries think that the city is a whim of its founder and that she will not play any more any part after the death of the emperor.

As of Constantin 1st, the city counts 100.000 inhabitants and extends on more than 7 km ². It reaches 200.000 inhabitants at the end of the 4th century. Constantinople, located out of the zones of conflict, sees its population increasing. The number of its inhabitants is discussed: 800.000 inhabitants during the 5th century for Bertrand Lançon, 4 to 500.000 for A. Ducellier, Mr. Kaplan and B. Martin. The embellishment of the city is the principal building site of the emperors starting from Constantin 1st. This one made built there, the imperial palace, the hippodrome, the new name given to the Roman circuses, the church of Crowned Wisdom (Holy-Sophie). The city increases then towards the West. The enclosure of origin enclosing 700 hectares sufficient more, Théodose II surrounds it by new ramparts between 412 and 414, which increase the surface of the city to 1.450 hectares. The Concile of Chalcédoine of 451, in its twenty-eighth gun, gives to the town of Constantinople the title of “Rome News”, which makes of its bishop, the Patriarche of Constantinople, the second character of the Church. This still contributes to give to the city its character independent of capital of the Byzantine Empire.

For the Byzantine period

In 673, the fleet of the Caliph of Baghdad besieges the city but must be folded up in front of Byzantine resistance. The Byzantine, very organized fleet and heiress of the ancient naval tactics, were extremely famous at that time: the Byzantines are regarded as the inventors of the Gouvernail of stern post (transmitted in occident by the Varègues via the the Baltic) and of the Greek fire (mixture of pitch and flammable powder which one projected on the enemy ships).

Constantinople and its Empire had five centuries of prosperity thanks to the trade Europe-Asia (it state the Western terminus of the Silk route and resisted grinds invasions (Avars, Slaves, Arab, Vikings, etc) until of 1204, when the Fourth crusade was diverted by the Venetian ones towards Constantinople, taken by treachery. There was on this occasion the famous Sac of Constantinople. The " beginning of the fin" for civilization gréco-Roman and Christian orthodoxe of the Empire, thus came not from the Moslems, but from the Westerners. The city and the Empire definitively lost their commercial resources with the profit of the Venetian ones and Génois, and the Empire was divided into three states: Despotat d' Epire, the Empire of Nicée and the Empire of Trébizonde.

Constantinople became the capital of the Latin Empire of Constantinople rested by the Crusaders, until in 1261, when the forces of the Empire of Nicée led by Michel VIII Paleologist took again the city. But the city, emptied of all its richnesses, its inhabitants and with the three quarters in ruin, sorrow to be rebuilt. The Emperors are involved in debt more and more with respect to Génois and of Venetian to which they concede enormous privileges. In 1355 the Othoman Turks , who already seized the totality of the Anatolia, pass to Europe and seize in forty years the Peninsula Balkans: Constantinople is encircled and the Empire is reduced to its capital, with Trébizonde, Mistra and some Aegean Islands.

The May 29th 1453, Constantinople is taken by the Othoman forces led by Mehmet II. The last Roman Emperor Constantin XII Dragasès dies on the ramparts by defending his city.
fall of Constantinople puts an end to empire which had lasted 1000 years, which had seen Rome crumbling and, which very seldom arrived in the history, which had survived in two eras (Antiquity and the Middle Ages). Its fall marked for the East the end of civilization that Hyeronymus Wolf called hundred years later Byzantine , but for the Occident, which inherited via Italy this civilization, it was the advent of a Renaissance.

The capital of the Ottoman Empire

The Othomans re-elected the city Istanbul, although the international practice kept the name Constantinople until 1936 20th century. One also named it Sublime Door during the 19th century. The Othomans repopulate it Turks and the Roumis (Turkish form of the word Romées by which the Byzantine indicated themselves) gather in the northern district (Phanar, from where them nickname of Phanariotes ). The sultans in their turn embellish and develop the city: they restore the cisterns and the baths (thermal baths gréco-Romans which we since then call Turkish baths ). The city becomes again one of the metropolises of the world, with a standard of living and of hygiene superior to the European average.

At the time of the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, in 1923, the capital was transferred to Ankara. But Istanbul continued to grow, a colossal bridge was built over the Bosphorus, then a second, and it is now a metropolis comparable with New York, with the same problems of overpopulation, price, transport and pollution. On nearly 10 million inhabitants for the whole of the agglomeration, from now on with horse on Europe and Asia, it remains less than 3000 Roumis of origin, of which the Patriarche of Constantinople, last memory of the Empire.

Monuments of the city

Monuments and constructions of the pre-Turkish time

Constantin equips the town of many buildings, the majority to meet the administrative and political needs for the new capital.
  • the Large palace, the imperial palace, official place of residence of the emperors until 1204.
  • Augustéon: place central from the city, between Holy-Sophie and the crowned whole of the imperial palace
  • Sénat out of white marble with a cupola
  • Hippodrome: inaugurated by Constantin into 330, it could accommodate of 30 with 50  000 spectators. It attracted much at the time of the festivals, birthdays, victories of the emperor. One attended races of tanks to with it, Circus games, demonstrations of animals. The hippodrome communicated directly with the imperial palace by the imperial cabin, from where the emperor attended the spectacles surrounded by the senators and the dignitaries of his court. On the spina, low wall dividing the track into two and around whose the tanks turned, were decorative monuments, among which a serpentine Colonne bronze removed with the sanctuary of Delphes (supposed to be the tripod of the Pythea) and the obelisk of Thoutmosis III coming from Karnak. One could also see, crowning the imperial cabin, four bronze horses, which catch at the time of the bag of the city in 1204, and were placed on the Basilique Saint-Marc with Venice. It was the theater of one of the bloodiest episodes of the history of the city: in January 532, the Sédition Nika shakes the throne of Justinien. Bélisaire, its best general, represses the revolt by massacring 30  000 people in the hippodrome.
  • the Mass: avenue bordered of gantries with at the bottom of the shops; forum.
  • Of the aristocratic palates, in the center near the hippodrome (Palate of Lausos, Palate of Antiochos, later partially transformed into Holy-Euphémie church ), others later, isolated and closed on outside with gardens and baths, Palate of Blachernes, Palate of Boucoléon;
  • Aqueduct S (Aqueduct of Valens) and monumental cisterns, the such Cistern Basilica (Yerebatan Sarayı), the Cistern of Aspar, and that of Philoxenos (Binbirdirek);
  • Of the churches  : Holy-Sophie, the church of the Saint-Apostles, Saint-Saver-in-Chora;
  • walls of Théodose and the Wall of Constantin (fortifications of the city);
  • the Door of Gold
  • Of the forums

Personalities

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