Istanbul

• 1. Introduction

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  Istanbul is the only city in the world that stands on two continents, with about two-thirds of its more than 15 million people living in Europe and the rest in Asia. The Bosphorus splits it down the middle. That strait is one of the world's busiest waterways, and it is the only sea route between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. For nearly sixteen centuries this place served as the capital of four empires in turn. It carried at least three names across its life, and a 1953 song was written just to settle the question of what to call it. How did a Greek colony on a rocky promontory become the heart of Christianity, then the seat of the last caliphate, then a republic's largest city that is no longer even its capital? And why do palaces and imperial mosques still line its hills when the government sits hundreds of miles away in Ankara?

• 2. The Many Names

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  Byzantium was the first known name, given by Megarian colonists around 657 BCE. Those settlers claimed descent from a founder called Byzas, said to be the son of the god Poseidon and the nymph Ceroessa. Modern excavations raise the possibility that the name reflects earlier native Thracian settlements on the site.

  Constantine the Great refounded the city in 324 CE, and the Latin name Constantinople followed from his own. He had first called it New Rome, in Latin Nova Roma. In the West, Constantinople stayed the most common name until the 1930s, when Turkish authorities began pressing foreign languages to adopt Istanbul.

  The name Istanbul is commonly held to come from a Medieval Greek phrase, eis ten Polin, meaning simply "to the city." That was how local Greeks referred to Constantinople, since it was the only major city around. The Ottomans used the names Kostantiniye and Istanbul alternately, and they nicknamed it Dersaadet, the "Gate to Prosperity." The word Islambol first appeared on coinage in 1730, during the reign of Sultan Mahmud I.

• 3. Four Empires, One Throne

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  On the 11th of May 330, Constantinople was proclaimed the capital of the Roman Empire. When Theodosius I died on the 17th of January 395, the empire was split permanently between his two sons, and the city became the capital of the eastern half. During the next thousand years that state was commonly called the Byzantine Empire.

  Hagia Sophia, built during the reign of Justinian I, remained the world's largest cathedral for a thousand years. Constantine also expanded the Hippodrome, which held tens of thousands of spectators and became central to civic life. In the 5th and 6th centuries it was also the scene of unrest, including the Nika riots.

  The Fourth Crusade was diverted from its purpose in 1204, and the crusaders sacked the city and set up the Latin Empire in place of the Orthodox Byzantine one. By then the population had dwindled to a hundred thousand, down from half a million in the 8th century. The Byzantine Empire was restored, though weakened, in 1261. After that reconquest some monuments were repaired, and new works appeared, including the two Deesis mosaics in Hagia Sophia and Kariye.

  On the 29th of May 1453, after a 55-day siege in which the last Roman emperor, Constantine XI, was killed, Sultan Mehmed II "the Conqueror" captured the city. Hours later he rode to Hagia Sophia and summoned an imam to proclaim the shahada, turning the cathedral into an imperial mosque. He declared himself the new Kayser-i Rum, the Ottoman equivalent of the Caesar of Rome.

• 4. Mehmed's Open City

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  Mehmed II understood that revitalizing his new capital meant repopulating it, so he welcomed everyone, including foreigners, criminals, and runaways. That openness to outsiders came to define Ottoman political culture. He invited people from across Europe and built a cosmopolitan society that lasted through much of the Ottoman period.

  A huge new palace rose to rival the old one, along with a covered market that still stands as the Grand Bazaar, plus porticoes, pavilions, walkways, and more than a dozen new mosques. Restoration touched everything from roads to aqueducts. Mehmed turned a ramshackle old town into something that looked like an imperial capital.

  Plague in the 16th century ignored social hierarchy and killed rich and poor alike. The city was not zoned as modern cities are, so opulent houses shared streets and districts with tiny hovels. Only those rich enough to own secluded country properties had a chance of escaping the periodic epidemics.

  The Ottoman dynasty claimed the status of caliphate in 1517, and the city remained the capital of that last caliphate for four centuries. The reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, from 1520 to 1566, brought great artistic achievement, with chief architect Mimar Sinan designing several iconic buildings. By the end of the 18th century the population stood at 570,000.

• 5. The Empire's Long Unraveling

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  The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 reopened the Ottoman Parliament on the 23rd of July, after it had been closed since the 14th of February 1878. The civil strife that followed encouraged Austria-Hungary to annex Bosnia and Bulgaria to declare independence, in a coordinated move on the 5th of October 1908. Sultan Abdul Hamid II was deposed in 1909 after the counter-revolution known as the 31st of March incident.

  The Italo-Turkish War of 1911 to 1912 and the Balkan Wars of 1912 to 1913 battered the ailing capital. The Ottoman Empire then joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers and was defeated. The deportation of Armenian intellectuals on the 24th of April 1915 was among the events that marked the start of the Armenian genocide. Between 1914 and 1927, policies of Turkification and ethnic cleansing cut the city's Christian population from 450,000 to 240,000.

  The Armistice of Mudros was signed on the 30th of October 1918. Less than a month later, on the 12th of November, a ship carrying a French brigade entered the city and began the occupation. The occupation of Smyrna on the 15th of May 1919 marked the start of the Turkish War of Independence, led by Mustafa Kemal Pasha and the Turkish National Movement.

  The Grand National Assembly in Ankara abolished the Sultanate on the 1st of November 1922. The last Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed VI, left aboard the British warship HMS Malaya on the 17th of November 1922, and died in exile in Sanremo, Italy, on the 16th of May 1926. The Treaty of Lausanne was signed on the 24th of July 1923, and the last Allied forces departed on the 4th of October 1923. Turkish forces under Sukru Naili Pasha entered with a ceremony on the 6th of October, a date marked since as the Liberation Day of Istanbul.

• 6. A Republic's Largest City

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  On the 29th of October 1923 the Grand National Assembly declared the Turkish Republic, with Ankara as its capital and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as first President. The name Constantinople, in use for 1600 years, was officially changed to Istanbul on the 28th of March 1930. The Postal Services Law of that same date also renamed Angora as Ankara and Smyrna as Izmir.

  The 1942 wealth tax, levied at much higher rates on non-Muslims, forced the transfer or liquidation of many businesses owned by religious minorities. The 1955 Istanbul pogrom drove out most of the city's remaining Greeks. Further expulsions came in 1964 and 1965, after Turkey and Greece neared war over Cyprus, a crisis averted by the intervention of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. The Greek population fell from 110,000 in 1919 to 2,500 by the end of the 20th century.

  The Bosphorus Bridge, connecting the European and Asian sides, opened in 1973 and fueled migration from Anatolia. It was followed by the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge in 1988, the Marmaray Tunnel in 2013, and the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge and Eurasia Tunnel in 2016. The M1 metro line opened in 1989, the start of a network that has grown line by line into the M11, which opened in 2023.

  Much of the city grew through gecekondus, a word that literally means "built overnight" and refers to illegally built squatter homes. The college section of Robert College was nationalized and reorganized as Bogazici University in 1971, while its high school section continues as Robert Kolej. Istanbul's population increased tenfold between 1950 and 2000.

• 7. Two Continents, Fifty Hills

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  The confluence of the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus, and the Golden Horn gave the city both ideal defense and a natural toll-gate. Several islands, including Buyukada, Heybeliada, Burgazada, and Kinaliada, are part of the city. Landfill at places like Caddebostan has pushed the shoreline beyond its natural limits.

  Despite the myth of seven hills, there are in fact more than 50 within the city limits, the tallest being Aydos at 537 meters. The historic peninsula was settled as far back as the 6th millennium BCE, and that early settlement helped spread the Neolithic Revolution from the Near East to Europe before rising water inundated it. On the Asian side, the Fikirtepe mound dates from the Copper Age, with artifacts from 5500 to 3500 BCE.

  The North Anatolian Fault, locked just south of the city under the Sea of Marmara, caused earthquakes in 1766 and 1894. A quake of at least magnitude 7.0 is considered very likely in the 21st century. Since 2012, more than 500,000 vulnerable buildings have been demolished and replaced, yet over half a million flats remain at risk of collapse. On the 23rd of April 2025 an earthquake of preliminary magnitude 6.2 shook the city, and many people were hurt trying to jump from buildings.

  The Bosphorus carries more than 200 million tons of oil each year and hosts more than 130 fish taxa. From about 60 fish species recorded in the 1970s, only 20 still survive there. The city's stray cats, called sokak kedisi, number anywhere from a hundred thousand to over a million, and have become symbols of Istanbul.

• 8. The Engine And The Stage

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  Istanbul accounts for about thirty percent of Turkey's economy, and its productivity runs 110 percent higher than the national average. In 2018 its gross domestic product adjusted by purchasing power stood at 537.507 billion U.S. dollars. In 2019, companies based there produced exports worth 83.66 billion dollars, equal to 47 percent of the national total.

  The Port of Ambarli, on the western edge of the urban center, had an annual capacity of 3,104,882 TEUs in 2019, making it the third-largest cargo terminal in the Mediterranean basin. Borsa Istanbul, the country's only active stock exchange, was originally established as the Ottoman Stock Exchange in 1866. As of 2023, the tallest skyscraper in Istanbul and in Turkey is the 352 meter CBRT Tower in the Atasehir district.

  The first film screening in Turkey took place at Yildiz Palace in 1896, a year after the technology debuted in Paris. Movie theaters then clustered in Beyoglu, along the street now known as Istiklal Avenue. The films Uzak in 2002 and My Father and My Son in 2005, both shot in Istanbul, brought the nation's cinema substantial international success. The city's skyline also served as a backdrop for foreign films, including From Russia with Love in 1963.

  The Istanbul Festival began showcasing art in 1973, and from it grew the International Istanbul Film Festival and the Istanbul Jazz Festival in the early 1980s. The Istanbul Biennial, held every two years since 1987, rose to join the ranks of the Venice Biennale and the Sao Paulo Art Biennial. The Grand Bazaar, in operation since 1461, remains among the world's oldest and largest covered markets, a thread running unbroken from Mehmed's redevelopment to the shopping crowds of today.