50 Fun Facts About Constantinople

Which mythological monster's face is carved on two reused blocks beneath columns in Istanbul's Basilica Cistern?

Medusa stares out from both blocks, and nobody knows which older building the two heads were taken from.

The Blues and Greens, whose fans set Constantinople ablaze in the Nika riots of 532, were rival teams in which sport?

Chariot racing stirred loyalties so fierce that a week of rioting by the two fan clubs burned nearly half the city and left tens of thousands dead.

Two monks broke China's monopoly on which luxury good by smuggling its secret to Constantinople inside hollow canes?

Silk workshops opened in Constantinople soon after the monks carried silkworm eggs west, hidden in their bamboo canes.

Which Italian city displays four bronze horses that crusaders looted from Constantinople's Hippodrome in 1204?

Venice set the horses on the front of St Mark's Basilica, where they stayed until Napoleon hauled them off to Paris in 1797; they came home in 1815.

Greek fire, the secret weapon Byzantine ships sprayed at fleets attacking Constantinople, had which alarming property?

It burned on water, and writers of the time said only sand, strong vinegar or old urine could put it out.

Which band released the best-known cover, in 1990, of the 1953 novelty song "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)"?

They Might Be Giants revived a tune written exactly 500 years after the city fell to the Ottomans.

The fall of Constantinople on 29 May 1453 is the reason many Greeks consider which day of the week unlucky?

Tuesday has carried the stigma ever since the final Ottoman assault, launched shortly after midnight, broke into the city.

Which Ottoman weapons, hurling half-tonne balls, smashed gaps in Constantinople's thousand-year-old land walls in 1453?

Cannons could fire from more than a kilometre away, and their success against such famous defences heralded a change in siege warfare.

When the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed in 1923, which city replaced Constantinople as the national capital?

Ankara was chosen as part of a deliberate plan for a new, secular state, though the old imperial city remained the country's largest.

Which luxury train from Paris made Constantinople its famous terminus, first running there direct in 1889?

The Orient Express kept the city as its easternmost stop until 1977, pulling in at Sirkeci Terminal beside the old harbour.

Which Ottoman sultan, later nicknamed the Conqueror, captured Constantinople in 1453 when he was only 21?

Mehmed II went on to claim the title Caesar of Rome and turned the city into a thriving capital of his own empire.

Which expedition set out to recapture Jerusalem but instead sacked Christian Constantinople for three days in 1204?

The Fourth Crusade never reached its target, and Pope Innocent III, who had called it, had told its army not to attack fellow Christians.

Which invader's presence in the Balkans in the 440s drove Constantinople to rebuild its shattered walls in only 60 days?

Attila the Hun was close enough that the city's rival fan clubs, the Blues and the Greens, sent 16,000 men to the building work.

Florence Nightingale made her name at a hospital in Scutari, across the Bosporus from Constantinople, in which war?

The Crimean War brought British troops through the Ottoman capital, and Nightingale reached the Scutari barracks hospital with her volunteer nurses in November 1854.

Allied troops occupied Constantinople for nearly five years after the Ottoman Empire's defeat in which conflict?

World War I ended for the Ottomans with an armistice in October 1918; French and British troops marched in two weeks later and stayed until 1923.

A Byzantine emperor's children delivered in a special chamber of Constantinople's Great Palace were "born in the" what?

Purple was the imperial shade, and the birth chamber was built of porphyry, so the title Porphyrogennetos marked a child born to a ruling emperor.

Constantinople was said to copy Rome by being built across how many hills within its walls?

Seven hills were claimed for the new capital on purpose, and Istanbul is still nicknamed the City on the Seven Hills.

Which Turkish president turned Hagia Sophia from a working mosque into a museum in 1935?

Kemal Atatürk's change lasted 85 years: a Turkish court annulled the museum decree in 2020 and the building became a mosque again.

Which emperor rebuilt Hagia Sophia in under six years and reportedly boasted that he had outdone Solomon?

Justinian I opened the new church in December 537, five years and ten months after work began.

Which empress, a former stage performer, talked her husband out of fleeing Constantinople during the riots of 532?

Theodora argued, by one account, that it was better to die a ruler than to live as an exile, and the court stayed to fight.

Which inlet beside Constantinople did the Byzantines close to enemy ships with a great chain stretched to Galata?

The Golden Horn stayed shut in 1453 until the Ottomans gave up on breaking the chain and towed their ships overland on greased logs instead.

Which elite unit protecting Constantinople's emperors was recruited largely from Norsemen and, later, Anglo-Saxons?

The Varangian Guard suited emperors because northerners had no local loyalties, and Anglo-Saxons flocked to it after the Norman conquest of England.

By which Old Norse name, usually translated as "the Great City", did Vikings know Constantinople?

Miklagard appears in the sagas as the place where Norsemen went to serve the emperor and, with luck, come home rich.

What does the Greek name of Hagia Sophia, the great domed church of Constantinople, mean in English?

Holy Wisdom was the dedication of three successive churches on the site; the one standing today replaced a church destroyed by rioters in 532.

What became of Constantine XI, the last Byzantine emperor, when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453?

He died fighting, by most accounts in a last stand, though Greek legend says an angel turned him to marble to await his return.

Which event in the sky a week before Constantinople fell in 1453 was taken as fulfilling a prophecy of doom?

A lunar eclipse on 22 May was followed four days later by a thick fog that blotted out the whole city.

Which disease reached Constantinople in 542, reportedly killing thousands a day and infecting the emperor himself?

Plague killed about a fifth of the city's people at the height of the epidemic; the emperor caught it and recovered.

Constantinople's Serpent Column, a trophy of the Greek victory over Persia at Plataea, was taken from which sanctuary?

Delphi lost the bronze column when Constantine the Great carried it off to adorn his new capital's Hippodrome.

What do historians call the crusader state that ruled Constantinople from 1204 until the Byzantines retook it in 1261?

The Latin Empire got its name from later historians; its last ruler, Baldwin II, went into exile when the city was retaken.

Tradition says Byzantium, the future Constantinople, was founded by colonists led by Byzas from which Greek city?

Megara, a small city-state near Athens, planted the colony in the 7th century BC, about a thousand years before it became an imperial capital.

Which older Greek colony across the Bosporus from Byzantium was nicknamed the "City of the Blind" for its poorer site?

Chalcedon's founders, the story went, must have been blind to miss the far better site on the opposite shore; the place is now Istanbul's Kadıköy district.

Which emperor, a child when the work began, gave his name to Constantinople's double land walls of the 5th century?

Theodosius II was still a minor when the first phase was finished in 413, so the work was directed by his prefect Anthemius.

Which 4th-century Roman emperor gave his name to the great aqueduct whose arches still stand in central Istanbul?

Valens was on the throne when it was finished, and its surviving bridge, almost a kilometre long, still spans a main boulevard.

Which Italian republic's colonists built the Galata Tower in 1348, facing Constantinople across the harbour?

Genoa's traders called it the Tower of Christ, and at about 67 metres it was then the tallest building in the city.

Which sea, linking the Bosporus to the Dardanelles, washed the southern walls of Constantinople?

The Sea of Marmara, the ancient Propontis, is a small inland sea lying entirely inside modern Turkey, and sea walls once guarded the city along its shore.

The name Istanbul is commonly traced to a medieval Greek phrase with which everyday meaning?

To the city is how local Greeks referred to Constantinople, the only major city anywhere nearby.

A papal envoy excommunicating Constantinople's chief bishop in Hagia Sophia in 1054 is seen as the start of which split?

The East–West Schism still divides Catholic and Orthodox Christians, though the two sides cancelled the excommunications of 1054 in 1965 as a goodwill gesture.

What was the Milion, a domed monument that stood near Hagia Sophia in the centre of Constantinople?

A road-distance marker, it was the point from which distances along the roads to every city of the Eastern Roman Empire were measured.

Which flower, later the subject of a Dutch investment bubble, did Europe's diplomats discover in Ottoman Constantinople?

Tulip growing in the city goes back to at least 1055, but northern Europeans took no notice until their envoys reported on the flowers in the 1500s.

Which six-minaret Istanbul landmark of the early 1600s was built over the seats and imperial box of the old Hippodrome?

The Blue Mosque takes its popular name from the blue tones of the thousands of Iznik tiles that line its interior.

Which palace, begun in 1459 on the old acropolis of Byzantium, housed the Ottoman sultans for nearly four centuries?

Topkapı stayed the sultans' main residence until 1853 and was turned into a museum by government decree in 1924.

Which city, once called Adrianople, served as the Ottoman capital until the court moved to Constantinople after 1453?

Edirne had been the Ottomans' seat since the 1360s and was the birthplace of the sultan who went on to take Constantinople.

King Louis IX built the Sainte-Chapelle to house which relic, bought from Constantinople's indebted emperor Baldwin II?

The Crown of Thorns had been pledged to creditors as security for a huge loan before the French king redeemed it and carried it to Paris.

Which name did medieval Western Europe give to gold coins from Constantinople, borrowing the city's ancient Greek name?

Bezant comes from Byzantion, and the word later stretched to cover the gold dinars minted by Islamic rulers too.

Which general, later the conqueror of Vandal North Africa, helped crush Constantinople's Nika riots in 532?

Belisarius stormed the arena where the rioters had gathered, and by one ancient account about 30,000 people were killed.

Hagia Sophia was the world's largest cathedral for a thousand years until which Spanish city finished a bigger one?

Seville completed its cathedral in the early 16th century; it is also the largest Gothic cathedral in the world and holds the tomb of Christopher Columbus.

Which fortress did the Ottomans build on the Bosporus in 1452 to cut Constantinople off from help by sea?

Rumelihisarı, nicknamed the Strait-cutter, worked with an older fort on the opposite bank to throttle ships sailing to the city.

Which church, where Constantine the Great and most later emperors were buried, was razed to build the Fatih Mosque?

Holy Apostles was the city's busiest church and counted the skulls of Saints Andrew, Luke and Timothy among its treasures.

What brought down the original dome of Hagia Sophia in 558, only two decades after the great church opened?

An earthquake finished off a dome that was too flat; its replacement was raised about six metres to ease the strain on the walls.

Which northern writing system appears as graffiti scratched into the upper gallery of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople?

Runes survive on the marble of the upper galleries, thought to be the work of Scandinavian soldiers in the emperor's service.