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Byzantine flags and insignia. For most of its history, the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire did not use heraldry in the Western European sense of permanent motifs transmitted through hereditary right. [1] Various large aristocratic families employed certain symbols to identify themselves; [1] the use of the cross, and of icons of Christ, the ...
Constantinople [a] (see other names) became the capital of the Roman Empire during the reign of Constantine the Great in 330. Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century, Constantinople remained the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire (also known as the Byzantine Empire; 330–1204 and 1261–1453), the Latin Empire (1204–1261), and the Ottoman Empire (1453 ...
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centered in Constantinople during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The eastern half of the Empire survived the conditions that caused the fall of the West in the 5th century AD, and continued to exist until the fall of Constantinople ...
The origins of Byzantium are shrouded in legend. Tradition says that Byzas of Megara (a city-state near Athens) founded the city when he sailed northeast across the Aegean Sea. The date is usually given as 667 BC on the authority of Herodotus, who states the city was founded 17 years after Chalcedon. Eusebius, who wrote almost 800 years later ...
The history of Constantinople covers the period from the Consecration of the city in 330, when Constantinople became the new capital of the Roman Empire, to its conquest by the Ottomans in 1453. Constantinople was rebuilt practically from scratch on the site of Byzantium. Within half a century, thanks to the gigantic construction projects of ...
The city fell on 29 May after a total of seven weeks of siege: at this time, it was reckoned to have the strongest fortifications of any city in Europe. [124] After the capture of the city, one of Mehmed's first actions was to order the repair of the walls. [125] The wall was later damaged in the 1766 Istanbul earthquake.
After conquering the city, Mehmed II made Constantinople the new Ottoman capital, replacing Adrianople. The fall of Constantinople and of the Byzantine Empire was a watershed of the Late Middle Ages, marking the effective end of the Roman Empire, a state which began in roughly 27
A significant part of the cities (there were more than 900 of them by the 6th century) were founded during the period of Greek and Roman antiquity. The largest of them were Constantinople, Alexandria, Thessaloniki and Antioch, with a population of several hundred thousand people. Large provincial centers had a population of up to 50,000.