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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 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 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 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 ...
According to one of the many Greek legends about the Constantinople's fall to the Ottomans, when the Turks entered the city, an angel rescued the emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos, turned him into marble and placed him in a cave under the earth near the Golden Gate, where he waits to be brought to life again to conquer the city back for ...
This name failed to impress and the city soon became known as Constantinople, the City of Constantine. Constantine greatly enlarged the city, and one of his major undertakings was the renovation of the Hippodrome. It is estimated that the Hippodrome of Constantine was about 450 m (1,476 ft) long and 130 m (427 ft) wide.
Cities in the Byzantine Empire. In the Byzantine Empire, cities were centers of economic and cultural life. 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 ...