Capital of: The Roman Empire
Location: On the Bosphorous Strait
controlling entry to the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and vice
versa. Also on the historic divide between Europe and Asia (Minor).
So you might see why Constantine and his ilk thought it was a good
place to have a strong city.
Population:
around 500,000 (and rapidly shrinking as 543 AD dawned).
Possible
English meanings: City of Constantine (who wasn't self aggrandizing
at all...)
Significant
sights, or sites: The huge double walls, the Hagia Sophia Cathedral,
The Palace of the Emperor, the Palace of the Patriarch, the
Hippodrome the ferry across the Bosporus to the “Asia” part of
the city.
Public
Transportation: your feet, palanquin, the ferry.
Founding
and brief history: The city of Constantinople was, not surprisingly,
founded by Constantine in 324 AD, though there had been a city on the
site (in various states of disrepair) called Byzantium, since about
1000 years before that. This is why historians distinguish (some
historians I should say) the empire that was ruled from
Constantinople from the one that was ruled from Rome by calling it
the Byzantine Empire. Constantine appears to have wanted to move all
of government from Rome to Constantinople, but was perhaps persuaded
that such a break with tradition would not be a good a good idea.
Constantinople became the seat of government for the Eastern half of
the Roman empire instead. Pretty much the moment Constantine renamed
the city (in 330) the construction of the walls, one of
Constantinople's most well known features, began. The double wall was
completed by the Emperor Theodosius II around 100 years later. With
the severing of the Western Empire and it official fall in 476 AD,
Constantinople became the sole centre of Roman government, though
emperors would continue to try and regain ground in West for quite
some time after that. Justinian I, who became emperor 527, is the
last Emperor to have spoken Latin as a first language. Justinian's
story from peasant boy to emperor (as well as his uncle's Justin I
before him), is an interesting one, but not to be told here.
Justinian was married to Theodora, whose life from dancer to empress
is also rather interesting. They came to power with grand plans of
restoring the empire to its former glory and very nearly succeeded.
The plague that hit the city 542 had a devastating effect on their
plans.
When
I first realized Constantinople existed: Around the time I was
reading Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantine Mosaic books. Saratium was the
name Kay gave his fantasy version of Constantinople. The story
centres around the mosaic the is being done in the stand in for the
Hagia Sophia, during the reign of the stand in for Justinian.
One
interesting fact: The walls of Constantinople were not penetrated in
over a thousand years. They were only brought down by the
fantastically large canons commissioned by Mehmed the second of the
Ottoman empire. In other words, walls build in the 400s proved so
strong that it took large amounts of gun powder even to breach them.
There is a great story about the Mehmed's big cannons, you should
google it.
References:
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