May 11: The Day Constantinople Was Officially Declared the ‘New Rome’

Emperor Constantine the Great. Credit: Flickr / Smabs Sputzer CC BY 2.0

Roman Emperor Constantine the Great officially declared Constantinople his “New Rome” and the superior of the Roman Empire connected May 11, 330AD. This was done with each the pomp and condition 1 mightiness imagine.

Little did the satellite cognize that this metropolis that would travel to universally beryllium known arsenic Constantinople would go 1 of the astir important successful the world.

The walls of Constantinople. Credit: archer10, Flickr, CC BY 2.0

The time a tiny municipality became Constantinople

Emperor Constantine, knowing however important the East was for the endurance of his Empire, chose an ancient Greek city, Byzantium, arsenic the caller halfway of the Roman world. He needed a superior that made strategical sense, controlling those captious commercialized routes connecting Europe and Asia. Additionally, helium wanted a metropolis that felt new, offering his pagan Empire a caller commencement for its Christian era.

The aged tract of Byzantium, with its fantastic earthy harbor and practically impregnable location, was rather virtually a no-brainer. They accidental Constantine himself, possibly aft a peculiarly vivid dream, personally marked retired the city’s caller boundaries. Imagine the enactment enactment into transforming a comparatively tiny municipality into a sprawling metropolis decked retired with expansive avenues, awesome forums, and walls that would marque immoderate invader deliberation doubly earlier laying hands connected it.

That inauguration took spot connected May 11 330 AD. It was a existent turning constituent that fundamentally changed the people of European history. For implicit a millennium, Constantinople would basal tall, becoming a beacon of culture, a hub of knowledge, and a formidable shield against the rising forces of the East. Its power successful fields specified arsenic art, law, religion, and commerce would beryllium consequential.

Jesus and John the Baptist (Ioannis o Prodromos) mosaic successful Hagia Sophia. Credit: Patricia Barden, Flickr, CC-BY NC ND 2.0

Think astir those stunning Byzantine mosaics you spot successful aged churches. Their creator DNA is inactive evident successful modern designs. Now see the ineligible model laid down by Justinian. Its principles stay the bedrock of ineligible systems crossed Europe and beyond. Even the Great Schism betwixt the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, a disagreement that sadly continues to this day, finds its roots successful the chiseled histories of the empires centered successful Rome and Constantinople.

The autumn of Constantinople successful 1453 was a dramatically altering lawsuit that ended this 1,123 year-old history. Yet, Constantinople didn’t cease to exist. Even arsenic it became Kostantiniyye and aboriginal Istanbul, the bosom of the Ottoman Empire, the metropolis carried its Byzantine bequest guardant though it would beryllium substantially transformed.

Today, wandering done the vibrant streets of this immense Turkish metropolis known arsenic Istanbul, you tin astir consciousness the past stacked successful 1 furniture upon the other—the Roman emperors, the Byzantine scholars, and the Ottoman sultans each sharing the aforesaid geographical area.