Turkey's largest city, Istanbul, is the only city in the world to straddle two continents—the western side of Istanbul is in Europe, while the eastern side of the city is in Asia. One of the most fascinating places in the world, Istanbul has been the capital of three empires and been known by many names, including Byzantium, Constantinople, and Istanbul. Its rich history, beautiful setting, and elegant skyline of domes and minarets make Istanbul an exotic crossroads of art, religions, and cultures.
Flowing through the heart of the city is the Bosporus Strait. This waterway, linking the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, has been one of the world’s most important channels for trade and cultural exchange for thousands of years. A group of Greeks built the city of Chalcedon on the Asian side of the Bosporus in the seventh century BC. These settlers were ridiculed as being "blind" for choosing a site so geographically unprotected. Legend has it that the oracle of Apollo at Delphi told the leader of another group of settlers, a man named Byzas, to found a city opposite the "land of the blind." Soon, these Greeks settled on the higher and more protected European side of the Bosporus, where they could take advantage of the Golden Horn, a natural harbor. Eventually, both sides became one city, known as Byzantium.
The area existed as an independent Greek state until around 195 AD, when the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus besieged the city for two years. He was angry with the people of Byzantium for supporting one of his enemies in a civil war. The city's residents starved within its walls, and many buildings were destroyed. After Byzantium finally surrendered, the emperor destroyed its walls as punishment, only to rebuild the city in the Roman style, with new walls and an arena for horse racing known as a hippodrome—the largest ever built in ancient times.
Constantine the Great became the Roman emperor in 324 AD, and six years later, proclaimed Byzantium the official capital of the empire. The city became known as Constantinople. A convert to Christianity himself—the first Roman emperor to embrace this faith—Constantine built many beautiful churches. He made the city a place where Christians could practice their religion without persecution. He made it the jewel of the empire with projects such as public baths, meeting halls, covered streets, and beautiful plazas filled with works of art from all over the territories under his control. When the Roman Empire was officially split into eastern and western halves in 395 AD, Constantinople became the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, what historians now call the Byzantine Empire.
When Justinian became the Byzantine emperor in 527 AD, he started to rebuild the Hagia Sophia—"The Church of Holy Wisdom"—which had been destroyed by riots twice in the previous two centuries. After it was completed, Justinian referred to King Solomon's magnificent temple in Jerusalem and exclaimed: "Solomon, I have outdone you!" The center of international trade, with a population over 300,000, the city was now a place where artists flourished, creating beautiful mosaics, religious icons, and silks.
In 542, however, bubonic plague hit the famed city. Transmitted by infected fleas, the plague caused swellings on the body, a high fever, and death for between 40 and 50 percent of Constantinople's population. Gravesites in the city filled up quickly, and corpses were thrown into the streets and sea. The plague led to a period of decline for the city. Even in the eighth century, only fifty thousand people still lived in Constantinople.
During the Crusades of the Middle Ages, Constantinople suffered another, even greater devastation. The Crusades were a series of religious wars between European Christians and Muslims for control of the holy city of Jerusalem and surrounding lands. In 1204, a young Byzantine convinced the army of the Fourth Crusade to attack Constantinople despite the fact that the city was Christian. He promised to pay the crusaders handsomely if they could place him on the throne.
He never paid them, and the crusaders took their revenge on the city—sacking it, burning books, and destroying priceless works of art and holy relics. Residents fled in terror as the soldiers rampaged through the streets, looting and burning. Even the sacred Hagia Sophia was desecrated and stripped of everything of value.
In the years that followed, the prominence and influence of Constantinople continued to decline, and the rise of Islam challenged the Byzantine Empire's political dominance. By 1393, the Ottoman Turks had conquered virtually all the land around the city and forced its residents to pay tribute. When Sultan Mehmed II finally conquered the city in 1453, he immediately went to the Hagia Sophia and declared it a mosque. Constantinople was now the capital of a third great realm—the Ottoman Empire.
The sultan wanted the city to become a thriving center for culture and trade. Mehmed II began to repair the city and proclaimed freedom of religion. This encouraged merchants and artisans of all faiths to move back into the once-Christian capital, bringing with them trades such as ceramics, calligraphy, and bookbinding. Within fifty years, Constantinople was once more the largest city in Europe.
Unfortunately, the city suffered again when an earthquake in 1509 destroyed nearly thirty kilometers of its seawalls, four thousand homes, and the treasury. Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent rebuilt the city, adding bridges, palaces, schools, and monuments. He also built some of the most glorious mosques in the city, including the Süleymaniye Mosque.
The Ottoman Empire lasted about six hundred years and came to an end with World War I. After the war, its people, the Turks, fought a war for independence from the occupying Allied Powers. In 1923, they formed a new democratic country, the Republic of Turkey, under military leader and statesman Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Atatürk declared that the city of Ankara would be the capital of Turkey. For the first time, Constantinople would not be a capital of any empire or country. Constantinople was officially renamed Istanbul in 1930.
Today, Istanbul stands proudly on its own with an atmosphere incomparable to that of any other place in the world. With a population of over 13 million, the city is a dazzling mixture of past and present, East and West. To celebrate the diversity of its history and people, the European Union chose Istanbul as one of its "European Capitals of Culture" for 2010. Istanbul hopes to show the world that the modern city continues to uphold its legacy as a natural and dynamic crossroads.