After taking the advice of the Oracle in Delphi that recommended to settle opposite the city of the blinds, in the 7th century BC, a sailor called Byzas founded a small Greek city called Byzantion. This colony from Megara settled on a promontory at the entrance of the natural harbour formed by the Golden Horn, in a beautiful and strategic site, opposite an earlier settlement on the Asian side (today Kadýköy), whose people had not realized the interest (the blinds).
Byzantion was coveted by many foreign sovereigns, and fell into the hands of Persian king Darius. It was delivered by Spartian king Pausanias after the Battle of Plateae (479 BC). Involved into the wars between Sparta and Athens, the descendants of Byzas learnt how to take advantage of reversing the alliances. The city was besieged by Philip of Macedonia (340), and another time by the Galatians (279 BC) to whom it had to pay a heavy tribute to lift the siege.
It became a prosperous trade center that controlled the sea and caravan routes. As Byzantion levied a right of way from all the ships that crossed the Bosphorus, the Anatolian kingdoms and cities started to launch attacks against it. The city resisted, but very weakened by the situation, between 2C BC and 1C BC, it rallied Rome, in return of protection and privileges. Byzantium became a Roman Province under Vespasian (69-79 AD).
As Byzantium took Pescinnus Niger's side against Septimus Severus, the latter, emerging as the winner, plundered the city after a siege that lasted between 193 and 196. Septime Severus rebuilt the city, adorning it with a hippodrome, palaces, and named it Augustina Antonina in honor of his son Antoninus (Caracalla).
After the defeat of Andrinople, Licinius, persued by his rival Constantine I, took refuge in Byzantium where he was vanquished in 324. Constantine I the Great (306-337), now sole ruler of the Roman Empire , made Byzantium the new capital under the name New Rome. Named Constantinople in 330, the city became the capital of the Byzantine Empire ( a Greek instead of a Roman empire) and the symbol of Christianity. In 391, Theodosius I started to purge the city from its pagan remains. Upon his death, the Empire was shared between his two sons, Honorius who received the Western Roman Empire, and Arcadius who received the Eastern Empire.
In 476 Rome fell into the hands of the Barbarians, and Constantinople remained the sole capital of the Empire.
Theodosius II (408-450) enlarged the city, delimiting it by new walls. A period of palace revolutions, moral standards depravity and civil wars followed until the reign of Justinian (527-565). Helped by general Belisarius and Theodora's firmness (she was a courtesan who became an impress), Justinian crushed the sedition which would have led the Empire to a disaster. He established an authoritary but enlightened order and gave the Empire administrative laws. He bought numerous civil and religious edifices such as Haghia Sophia. This period was the First Golden Age of Constantinople.
In the 7th and 8th centuries, Constantinople was besieged numerous times by the Bulgarians, the Avars, the Persians and the Arabs (four times). Leo III (717-740), followed by other Iconoclastic emperors, entered into a conflict of influence with the Church, prohibiting the whorship of holy images. Under the Macedonian dynasty founded by Basil I (867-886), Constantinople regained its fame and became the center of a great religious and political empire. Under Constantine Porphyrogenetus (912-959), it was the Second Golden Age Period of the city which became the undisputed capital of wealth and arts.
At the end of the 11th century, the religious schism that definitively separated the Roman Catholic Church from the Orthodox Church, and the arrival of the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia, weakened the Byzantine greatness. This period is also marked by the beginning of the Crusades and the direct intervention of the Westerners in the affairs of Orient: the Venitians, who under Justinian had already settled in Galata, had been allowed inside the city, and the Genoeses who in turn settled in Galata. A fundamental antagonism deepened by the schism, separated the Greeks from the Latins. Constantinople suffered neither from the two first Crusades in 1096-97 and 1147, nor from the third one which did not pass through the city. But during the Fourth Crusade, Constantinople was burnt and pillage, the Basileus (the emperor) was overthrown and Baldwin of Flanders was crowned Latin Emperor of Orient by the Papal Legate. The Byzantines gone into exile established an Independent Byzantine Empire in Trebizond and another one in Nicea from where came Michael VIII Paleologus who regained Constantinople in 1261, helped by the Genoeses. This was the last brilliant period of the Empire, called the "Paleologus Renaissance". Galata became a fortified place and the independent city of the Genoeses. They resisted the assaults of the Venitians against whom they fought for the monopoly of Constantinople's external and internal trade.
From the 14th century, the Byzantines had to confront the Ottoman Turks who conquired little by little their domains in Asia and Europe. Constantinople was besieged a first time in 1396 by Sultan Beyazýt who built the Anadolu Hisar Fortress. Opposite, the Rumeli Hisar Fortress was built in 1452 by Mehmet II who was preparing the blockade of the city. Having in vain sought help from the Pope who, in return, insisted on the union of the Greeks to the Roman Catholic Church, Constantine XI prepared himself for war, having the city walls repaired and chains stretched accross the Golden Horn to block the access to the ships. The siege started on April 6 1453, but the first attack was launched on April 18 or 19. To the surprise of the Byzantines, the sultan had his ships pulled on grease-coated boards to the top of a hill from where he had them slide into the Golden Horn. On May 23, new surrender proposals having been turned down, the final attack was launched in the night of May 28-29 1453. While a standard-bearer drove in one of the towers the first Ottoman standard, Emperor Constantine XI died fighting at the walls where the present Vatan Avenue (Vatan Caddesi) begins.
Constantinople met with the same fate as any city that has refused to surrunder: it was looted during three days. Then Mehmet II the Conqueror signed a Firman (decree) saying that the defeated people would be restored their rights. He gave his protection to the Christians, appointed a new patriarch called Gennadios, he acknowledged the privileges of the Genoeses at Galata (however ordering the destruction of the walls), allowed the Venitians to trade freely. The Greeks clustered around their patriarchate at Fener, the Armenians at Yedikule, the Jews at Balat. Colonists arrived from different parts of Anatolia and the Empire. Then Constantinople entered into a new era of prosperity and quietness, sometimes troubled by palace discords and natural disasters. The Islamic city, adorned with beautiful monuments, reached its apogée under the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent. Since the conquest, the history of Constantinople has been connected to the history of the Ottoman Empire, then to that of Modern Turkey , as it remained the Capital of the Empire until 1923 when it was replaced by Ankara after the Turkish Republic was proclaimed.
The city went through several name changes before it finally became Stambul, then Istanbul in 1930.

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