City of Constantine

Underneath old Istanbul is an ancient world that's almost invisible, unless you know where to look…

A review of "The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople" by Sarah Bassett. 'Although Constantinople was the most important city of the medieval Mediterranean, scholars are poorly informed about its physical fabric.'

Eerie, filmic illustrations of city life as it might have looked. See also Antoine Helbert's immaculate architectural cross-sections.

Stunning watercolor of the area around the Hippodrome and Great Palace in the early Byzantine period.

A historically-sensitive bird's eye illustration of the city just after its refounding, before the Theodosian Walls had been built.

The earliest surviving representation of the city post-conquest, and the first of several very similar bird's-eye depictions from the Uskudar (Asian) shore. Possibly itself based on a lost Giovanni Bellini map from 1480, just before Mehmet II's death.

Colored woodcut of the city circa 1550. Note the still-standing Column of Justinian shouldering the Hagia Sophia, and the 'Palace of Constantine' (Porphyrogenitus, son of Michael VIII Palaiologos, b. 1261).

Published as part of a compendium of 546 views of the world's greatest cities, it's hard not to see this map as entirely lifted from Münster's woodcut produced 25 years earlier, with the addition of Suleiman looking Magnificent at the bottom.

Franco-German map of 1812 hinting at the pre-modern city, with crude topography.

A very pretty French map showing Muslim, Christian and Jewish quarters, still-extant ruins of the Byzantine harbours on the Marmara side, and the mercurial 'Forum Amastrianorum'.

Somewhat hard to read with the Ancient/Byzantine overlaying the 19th c. Ottoman, but nonetheless invaluable as an overview of the old city's imprint on the new.

Older sources such as this suggest the Mese wasn't a straight line from the Forum of Constantine to the Forum of the Ox, and that the Forum of Theodosius was much larger and much closer to the Valens Aqueduct.

The known features of the Hebdomon ('the seventh', an area seven Roman miles from the Milion), most of which have disappeared entirely over the last century, from Demangel, R. (1945), 'Contribution a la Topographie de L’Hebdomon'.

1970s map outlining the archeological foundations —Ottoman, Byzantine and Greek— around Topkapi and the Great Palace.

The pre-Justinian city's major features, as mentioned in the c.450 'Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae'.

Crude map laying out the Constantinian city's food supply, storage and production.

A map and collection of images collated in 2001. The site is showing its age: many images are tiny, and the map is a clunky black and white scan.

Shows the water system supplying and flowing from the Valens Aqueduct, 'Bozdogan Kemer'.

Layers exhaustive collection of sites on an instructive topographic background. I personally take the street grid and forum dimensions with a very big pinch of salt.

Useful for understanding why the city developed the way it did. See, for example, why the Valens Aqueduct was needed to bridge the elevated north-western entrance to the city to its eastern-most tip.

The acoustics of a popped balloon applied to 13th c. Byzantine chant sung by a choir from Portland, Oregon. Mesmerizing. A full album is available for purchase and streaming.

The first archaeological essay on Constantinople. Became a classic travel guide, translated into English in 1729.

Hand-written, hand-sketched book recording Constantinople's soon-to-be-lost Byzantine artifacts in the mid-19th c.

Illustrated history of Constantinople. 'The holiday-task [...] of a College don, to whom there is no city in the world so impressive and so fascinating as the ancient home of the Cæsars of the East.'

The one and only podcast coursing the millenium-long survival, near-collapse, semi-comeback and eventual eclipse of the Ῥωμαῖοι. Thankfully it's exceptional. Thoughtfully narrated, its half-hour segments combine an imperial narrative with social and economic history asides, source discussion and interviews with prominent Byzantine historians.

Postulating the fate of the Column of Justinian after the conquest.

'We know precious little about the medieval city of Constantinople —that is, not the Late Antique city built by Constantine, Theodosius, and Justinian, with which we are more familiar, but the city into which it evolved following the Dark Ages of the seventh to ninth centuries.'

Was Constantinople a planned city, with a regular street layout?

A critical re-evaluation of Berger's above 'Streets and Public Spaces in Constantinople'.

Triangulating a plausile location of one of Constantinople's forgotten squares.

'Housing resulting from unplanned urbanization account for majority of the destruction on the Byzantine buildings in the Marmara Region.' See p24 for Istanbul's monuments 'in a state of emergency'.

On the Column of Constantine's significance through the ages. "Western visitors during the Ottoman period knew the monument as 'La Colonne Brulée', which makes it sound like an exotic French desert".

The evolution of Constantinople's most celebrated columns, from pagan architectural elements to Christian urban monuments.

On the Forum of Constantine and its constituent monuments and adjacent buildings.

Well-researched, original articles on Byzantium and beyond. Ben is the author of 'Midway Through the Plunge', a gripping recounting of Byzantium's fateful chapter under John VI Cantacuzenus.

An encyclopedia of Byzantine sites, each with historical and current-day images and well-researched backstory.

Photo-realistic reconstuctions of some of Istanbul's lost Byzantine and Ottoman buildings, superimposed on modern-day photos of the city.

List of notable 15th-20th c. travel accounts to Constantinople, from where you can explore past attempts to document and map the city's monuments and features.

An extrememely rare look at the legendary tunnels and cisterns beneath the church, publicized by none other than Dan Brown. Will the full documentary every see the light of day?

Astounding visual tours of Constantinople in meticulously rendered 3D. The city never looked this good —and certainly not in 1200— but it's OK to dream.

The BBC's 'Ancient Invisible Cities' series applied 3D imaging technology to some of the greatest historical monuments from Cairo, Athens and Istanbul. While not revealing anything new, the Istanbul episode nonetheless provided this interactive 3D render of the city above, around and inside Hagia Sophia.

Short documentary on the art and acoustic science behind the project to revive the authentic 13th c. sound of Byzantine chant in the Hagia Sophia.

Type like a Byzantine in Latin or Greek with this academic font derived from inscriptions (coins, seals, mosaics and frescoes etc.) found empire-wide, 325-1453.