During its long history, Istanbul had several names: Byzantium, Nova Roma (briefly) and Constantinople. And at every turn, the city expanded creating new walls to defend its enlarged territory.
The Greek city of Byzantium covered the very tip of Istanbul's
historic peninsula. Its walls
surrounded the hill or plateau that later became the site of Hagia Sophia and
the Topkapi Palace. Towards the
end of the 2nd century, the Roman Emperor
Septimus Severus took over Byzantium and demolished its walls, only to
rebuild a new wall almost half a kilometer to the west and running trough a
second hill (the later site of Constantine's Forum.) In 330 Constantine the Great renamed the city Nova Roma,
made it the capital of the Roman Empire and began the construction of a new
wall almost three kilometers west of Severus's and encompassing two more
hills. Pretty soon the city was
renamed Constantinople and when in 408 Theodosius II began the construction of
his double wall about two kilometers west of Constantine's, the city had
incorporated three more hills. In
barely more than two centuries, this new Rome had managed to turn, like its
celebrated predecessor, into a city of seven hills.
While Justinian--the ambitious emperor that ruled the Byzantine
Empire for much of the 6th century--expanded the reach of the empire as far as
Spain, he didn't find the need to enlarge the capital itself. Instead, as we know, he chose to build
one of the most magnificent monuments in history: Hagia Sophia.
And that's the Constantinople that Sultan Mehmet II will
enter--actually through a huge cannon hole in the Theodosian Walls--about a
thousand years later and make it the new capital of the Ottoman Empire.
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