The Walls of Constantinople

This photo shows part of the remaining land walls of Constantinople (now Istanbul) that once surrounded the famous city, founded by Constantine the Great as his new Capital of the Roman Empire, in 330 AD. The town originally on the site had been called Byzantium and was said to have been founded in 658 BC by Greek colonists from Megara in Attica under their leader Byzas. The citizens of Constantinople referred to themselves as Romans and it is only later that historians began to call them Byzantines and the Eastern Roman Empire as Byzantium.

The other two photos show part of a large 3D 360 degree depiction of the events of May 1453 when the city of Constantinople finally fell to the Ottomans under Sultan Mehmed II, after a siege that lasted for seven weeks. The Diorama can be found in the Panorama 1453 Museum in the Topkapi Cultural Park in the Zeytinburnu district of Istanbul and is well worth a visit.

The name of Istanbul was a corruption of the Greek ‘Stην Πóλη’ meaning ‘to the City'.

It was used by the Turkish inhabitants in everyday speech from quite early on but was not adopted as the official name of the city by the Turkish Republic until 1930.