Istanbul: history and heritage

About Istanbul: history and heritage

By the ULTIMATE Istanbul Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

No city has been an imperial capital for longer. For some sixteen centuries, first as Constantinople and then as Istanbul, the city on the Bosphorus ruled empires that stretched across three continents. Its skyline of domes and minarets, its Byzantine walls and its Ottoman palaces are the record of that long reign, and its peoples, Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Turks and many more, made it one of the world’s great cosmopolitan cities.

At a glance

Population: 15,701,602 (Turkish Statistical Institute, address-based population register, end of 2024): the largest city in Europe.

Names through history: Byzantion, Constantinople, Kostantiniyye and Istanbul.

For some sixteen centuries this city on the Bosphorus was the capital of empires that spanned three continents.

Shaped by: Greek colonists, Rome, the Byzantine Empire (330–1453), the Ottoman Empire (1453–1922) and the Republic of Türkiye since 1923.

Geography: the Bosphorus strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, with the city on both the European and Asian shores.

Byzantium

Greek colonists from Megara founded Byzantion on the tip of the peninsula, by tradition in the seventh century BC. Its position, on a strait between two seas and two continents, with the deep harbour of the Golden Horn, made it rich.

Constantinople

In 330 AD the emperor Constantine made the city the new capital of the Roman Empire, Constantinople. Theodosius II gave it the land walls that still run for miles across the peninsula, and Justinian built Hagia Sophia, completed in 537, whose dome was the wonder of the medieval world. For a thousand years Constantinople was the capital of the Byzantine Empire, the Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian heir of Rome. The mosaics of the Chora, the Basilica Cistern and the Hippodrome survive from those centuries.

1453 and the Ottoman capital

On 29 May 1453 Sultan Mehmed II took the city after a siege of some seven weeks, and it became the Ottoman capital. The sultans built Topkapı Palace and, through their architect Mimar Sinan, the Süleymaniye Mosque (1550–1557) and many more; the Blue Mosque followed in the early seventeenth century and Dolmabahçe Palace in the nineteenth. The Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar served an empire that reached from Hungary to Arabia.

Peoples of the city

Ottoman Istanbul was a city of many peoples: Turks, Greeks, Armenians and Jews, including Sephardic families welcomed after their expulsion from Spain in 1492, as well as Levantine merchants in Galata and Pera. Churches, synagogues and mosques stand close together in Balat, Fener and Beyoğlu, and the cooking of the city, from meze to baklava, is the inheritance of all of them.

The Republic and today

The Republic of Türkiye was proclaimed in 1923 with Ankara as its capital, but Istanbul remained the country’s largest city and its cultural and economic heart. Hagia Sophia became a museum in 1934 and is now a mosque again, open to visitors outside prayer times. The historic peninsula has been UNESCO World Heritage since 1985, and new museums, from Istanbul Modern to the Pera Museum, and the Istanbul Biennial keep the city’s art scene vivid.

Our advice: see Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and the Basilica Cistern early on a weekday, then take a public ferry across the Bosphorus to Kadıköy, so that you cross from Europe to Asia the way Istanbullus do every day.

Sources

Population: Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK), Address Based Population Registration System results, 2024. History: UNESCO World Heritage Centre (Historic Areas of Istanbul); Istanbul Archaeological Museums; Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Istanbul”.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Istanbul: history and heritage before you go.