A new Rome on the Bosphorus
Byzantion was an old Greek colony on a triangle of land between the Sea of Marmara, the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, where Europe faces Asia. After winning control of the whole empire, Constantine chose it for a new capital, closer to the eastern frontiers and the trade routes than Rome. He enlarged it, filled it with monuments and statues brought from across the empire, and dedicated it on 11 May 330. It took his name: Constantinople, the city of Constantine.
Constantine also favoured the Christian church, here and in Jerusalem, where he built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and his new city soon had great churches as well as forums and baths. For more than a thousand years, its rulers called themselves Roman emperors, while the language of their court and church became Greek. That is why historians speak of Byzantine art as both Roman and Christian.
The walls that held for a thousand years
In 413, under the emperor Theodosius II, the city was given a new line of land walls, about 6.5 kilometres long, from the Sea of Marmara to the Golden Horn. After an earthquake damaged them in 447, they were rebuilt and strengthened in a few months, according to an inscription, with a moat, an outer wall and a taller inner wall with nearly a hundred towers. This triple barrier resisted sieges by Huns, Avars, Persians, Arabs and Bulgars.
The walls fell twice. In 1204 the knights of the Fourth Crusade took the city from the sea side and sacked it; among the loot were the four bronze horses now in Venice, taken to St Mark’s Basilica. The Byzantines recovered their capital in 1261. On 29 May 1453, after a siege of nearly two months, the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II broke through, and the city became the Ottoman capital.
The Hippodrome and the palace
Next to the imperial palace lay the Hippodrome, the stadium for chariot races, where the emperor appeared before his people. Its central barrier was decorated with trophies from the ancient world. Two still stand in the square called Sultanahmet: an Egyptian obelisk of the pharaoh Thutmose III, set up in 390 by Theodosius I on a carved base, and the bronze Serpent Column, made to celebrate the Greek victory over the Persians at Plataea in 479 BCE and brought from the sanctuary of Delphi.
In 532 the Hippodrome was the starting point of the Nika riot, when rival racing factions joined against the emperor Justinian and burned much of the centre. Justinian crushed the revolt and rebuilt on a grand scale, starting with Hagia Sophia. Little survives of the Great Palace itself, but a mosaic floor with hunting and country scenes can be seen in the Great Palace Mosaic Museum.
What you can still see
Much of Byzantine Constantinople lies under modern Istanbul, but its main monuments are still there. Hagia Sophia, completed in 537, dominates the old city. Below ground, Justinian’s cisterns stored water for the palace. Near the land walls, the Chora Church keeps mosaics of the fourteenth century, and the walls themselves can be followed for kilometres, restored in parts and ruined in others. The historic areas of Istanbul have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985.
Where to see it
The historic peninsula of Istanbul, in the Fatih district, holds Hagia Sophia, the Hippodrome (Sultanahmet Square), the Basilica Cistern and the Great Palace Mosaic Museum within a few minutes’ walk. The Theodosian Walls run along the western edge of the peninsula, with the Chora Church nearby.
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Historic Areas of Istanbul”.
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline, “Byzantium (ca. 330-1453)”.
- J. Harris, Constantinople: Capital of Byzantium (London, 2nd ed. 2017).
- Herodotus, Histories 9.81 (the Plataea offering at Delphi).
