Constantinople

by Matt Riggsby

For a thousand years, from its rededication by an emperor to its conquest by the Ottoman Turks, Constantinopolis (Byzantium to the ancient Greeks, Istanbul to the Turks, and Constantinople to us Westerners) was the leading city of Europe: capital of empire, center of trade, and bastion of Christianity. It was a metropolis of as many as a million souls, decorated with the grandest churches in Christendom, the most lavish palace on the continent, and the greatest fortifications of any city in the world before or since. Constantinople can serve as the model for an imperial capital in your own fantasy game or, of course, appear in a Medieval historical game. Characters expecting a Classical polis or a high-powered version of a western Medieval town are in for a shock. The Byzantine empire was a unique society, drawing from its Classical heritage and Christian roots similar to those of the west, but it was very different from both.

Constantinople

Geography and Land Use

Constantinople lies on a peninsula at the northern mouth of the Sea of Marmara, where Europe meets Asia Minor. The roughly triangular peninsula has the Sea of Marmara to the south; the Golden Horn, an inlet, to the north, and Europe to the west. This position had enormous strategic value. In the heart of the wealthy, densely populated Greek-speaking world, it controlled land-based trade moving east and west and sea-borne trade moving north and south, and occupied a defensible position . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: June 29, 2001

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