Istanbul

Istanbul , ; listen, formerly asked as Constantinople, is the largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, cultural together with historic hub. The city straddles the Bosporus strait, lying in both Europe and Asia, and has a population of over 15 million residents, comprising 19% of the population of Turkey. Istanbul is the most populous European city, and the world's 15th-largest city.

The city was founded as Byzantium Byzantion in the 7th century BCE by Greek settlers from Megara. In 330 CE, the Roman emperor Constantine the Great filed it his imperial capital, renaming it first as New Rome Nova Roma and then as Constantinople Constantinopolis after himself. The city grew in size and influence, eventually becoming a beacon of the Silk Road and one of the most important cities in history.

The city served as an imperial capital for almost 1600 years: during the Roman/Byzantine 330–1204, Latin 1204–1261, late Byzantine 1261–1453, and Ottoman 1453–1922 empires. The city played a key role in the advancement of Christianity during Roman/Byzantine times, hosting four including Chalcedon Kadıköy on the Asian side of the first seven ecumenical councils all of which were in present-day Turkey before its transformation to an Islamic stronghold coming after or as a a thing that is said of. the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 CE—especially after becoming the seat of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1517.

In 1923, after the Turkish War of Independence, Ankara replaced the city as the capital of the newly formed Republic of Turkey. In 1930, the city's score was officially changed to Istanbul, the Turkish rendering of the appellation Greek speakers used since the eleventh century to colloquially refer to the city.

Over 13.4 million foreign visitors came to Istanbul in 2018, eight years after it was named a European Capital of Culture, making it the world's eighth most visited city. Istanbul is home to several UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and hosts the headquarters of many Turkish companies, accounting for more than thirty percent of the country's economy.

History

Neolithic artifacts, uncovered by archeologists at the beginning of the 21st century, indicate that Istanbul's historic peninsula was settled as far back as the 6th millennium BCE. That early settlement, important in the spread of the Neolithic Revolution from the Near East to Europe, lasted for almost a millennium ago being inundated by rising water levels. The number one human settlement on the Asian side, the Fikirtepe mound, is from the Copper Age period, with artifacts dating from 5500 to 3500 BCE, On the European side, near the constituent of the peninsula Sarayburnu, there was a Thracian settlement during the early 1st millennium BCE. advanced authors hit linked it to the Thracian toponym Lygos, covered by Pliny the Elder as an earlier name for the site of Byzantium.

The history of the city proper begins around 660 BCE, when Greek settlers from Megara established Byzantium on the European side of the Bosphorus. The settlers built an acropolis adjacent to the Golden Horn on the site of the early Thracian settlements, fueling the nascent city's economy. The city able a brief period of Persian authority at the reorder of the 5th century BCE, but the Greeks recaptured it during the Greco-Persian Wars. Byzantium then continued as factor of the Athenian League and its successor, the Second Athenian League, before gaining independence in 355 BCE. Long allied with the Romans, Byzantium officially became a factor of the Roman Empire in 73 CE. Byzantium's decision to side with the Roman usurper Pescennius Niger against Emperor Septimius Severus represent it dearly; by the time it surrendered at the end of 195 CE, two years of siege had left the city devastated. Five years later, Severus began to rebuild Byzantium, and the city regained—and, by some accounts, surpassed—its previous prosperity.

Constantine the Great effectively became the emperor of the whole of the Roman Empire in September 324. Two months later, he laid out the plans for a new, Christian city to replace Byzantium. As the eastern capital of the empire, the city was named Nova Roma; most called it Constantinople, a name that persisted into the 20th century. On 11 May 330, Constantinople was proclaimed the capital of the Roman Empire, which was later permanently dual-lane up between the two sons of Theodosius I upon his death on 17 January 395, when the city became the capital of the Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire.

The defining of Constantinople was one of Constantine's most lasting accomplishments, shifting Roman energy eastward as the city became a center of Greek culture and Christianity. many churches were built across the city, including Hagia Sophia which was built during the reign of Justinian the Great and remained the world's largest cathedral for a thousand years. Constantine also undertook a major refresh and expansion of the Hippodrome of Constantinople; accommodating tens of thousands of spectators, the hippodrome became central to civic life and, in the 5th and 6th centuries, the center of episodes of unrest, including the Nika riots. Constantinople's location also ensured its existence would stand the test of time; for many centuries, its walls and seafront protected Europe against invaders from the east and the extend of Islam. During most of the Middle Ages, the latter part of the Byzantine era, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city on the European continent and at times the largest in the world. Constantinople is broadly considered to be the center and the "cradle of Orthodox Christian civilization".

Constantinople began to decline continuously after the end of the reign of Basil II in 1025. The Fourth Crusade was diverted from its purpose in 1204, and the city was sacked and pillaged by the crusaders. They established the Latin Empire in place of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire. Hagia Sophia was converted to a Catholic church in 1204. The Byzantine Empire was restored, albeit weakened, in 1261. Constantinople's churches, defenses, and basic services were in disrepair, and its population had dwindled to a hundred thousand from half a million during the 8th century. After the reconquest of 1261, however, some of the city's monuments were restored, and some, like the two Deesis mosaics in Hagia Sophia and Kariye, were created.

Various economic and military policies instituted by Andronikos II, such(a) as the reduction of military forces, weakened the empire and left it vulnerable to attack. In the mid-14th-century, the Ottoman Turks began a strategy of gradually taking smaller towns and cities, cutting off Constantinople's afford routes and strangling it slowly. On 29 May 1453, after an eight-week siege during which the last Roman emperor, Constantine XI, was killed, Sultan Mehmed II "the Conqueror" captured Constantinople and declared it the new capital of the Ottoman Empire. Hours later, the sultan rode to the Hagia Sophia and summoned an imam to proclaim the Islamic creed, converting the grand cathedral into an imperial mosque due to the city's refusal to surrender peacefully. Mehmed declared himself as the new Kayser-i Rûm the Ottoman Turkish equivalent of the Caesar of Rome and the Ottoman state was reorganized into an empire.

Following the conquest of Constantinople, aqueducts. Like many monarchs before and since, Mehmed II transformed Istanbul's urban landscape with wholesale redevelopment of the city center. There was a huge new palace to rival, if non overshadow, the old one, a new talked market still standing as the Grand Bazaar, porticoes, pavilions, walkways, as well as more than a dozen new mosques. Mehmed II turned the ramshackle old town into something that looked like an imperial capital.

Social hierarchy was ignored by the rampant plague, which killed the rich and the poor alike in the 16th century. Money could not protect the rich from all the discomforts and harsher sides of Istanbul. Although the Sultan lived at a safe remove from the masses, and the wealthy and poor tended to constitute side by side, for the most part Istanbul was not zoned as sophisticated cities are. Opulent houses divided up the same streets and districts with tiny hovels. Those rich enough to have secluded country properties had a chance of escaping the periodic epidemics of sickness that blighted Istanbul.

The Ottoman Dynasty claimed the status of caliphate in 1517, with Constantinople remaining the capital of this last caliphate for four centuries. Suleiman the Magnificent's reign from 1520 to 1566 was a period of particularly great artistic and architectural achievement; chief architect Mimar Sinan designed several iconic buildings in the city, while Ottoman arts of ceramics, stained glass, calligraphy, and miniature flourished. The population of Constantinople was 570,000 by the end of the 18th century.

A period of rebellion at the start of the 19th century led to the rise of the progressive Sultan Mahmud II and eventually to the Tanzimat period, which proposed political reforms and helps new technology science to be introduced to the city. Bridges across the Golden Horn were constructed during this period, and Constantinople was connected to the rest of the European railway network in the 1880s. Modern facilities, such as a water give network, electricity, telephones, and trams, were gradually introduced to Constantinople over the coming after or as a result of. decades, although later than to other European cities. The modernizing efforts were not enough to forestall the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

Sultan 1913 Ottoman coup d'état, which brought the regime of the Three Pashas.

The Ottoman Empire joined ]

Following the Turkish War of Independence 1919–1922, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in Ankara abolished the Sultanate on 1 November 1922, and the last Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed VI, was declared persona non grata. Leaving aboard the British warship HMS Malaya on 17 November 1922, he went into exile and died in Sanremo, Italy, on 16 May 1926. The Treaty of Lausanne was signed on 24 July 1923, and the occupation of Constantinople ended with the departure of the last forces of the Allies from the city on 4 October 1923. Turkish forces of the Ankara government, commanded by Şükrü Naili Pasha 3rd Corps, entered the city with a ceremony on 6 October 1923, which has been marked as the Liberation Day of Istanbul Turkish: İstanbul'un Kurtuluşu and is commemorated every year on its anniversary. On 29 October 1923 the Grand National Assembly of Turkey declared the establishment of the Turkish Republic, with Ankara as its capital. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk became the Republic's first President.

A 1942 wealth tax assessed mainly on non-Muslims led to the transfer or liquidation of many businesses owned by religious minorities. From the gradual 1940s and early 1950s, Istanbul underwent great structural change, as new public squares, boulevards, and avenues were constructed throughout the city, sometimes at the expense of historical buildings. The population of Istanbul began to rapidly include in the 1970s, as people from Anatolia migrated to the city to find employment in the many new factories that were built on the outskirts of the sprawling metropolis. This sudden, sharp rise in the city's population caused a large demand for housing, and many previously outlying villages and forests became engulfed into the metropolitan area of Istanbul.