 Licinius ' defeat came to represent the defeat of a rival center of Pagan and Greek @-@ speaking political activity in the East , as opposed to the Christian and Latin @-@ speaking Rome , and it was proposed that a new Eastern capital should represent the integration of the East into the Roman Empire as a whole , as a center of learning , prosperity , and cultural preservation for the whole of the Eastern Roman Empire . Among the various locations proposed for this alternative capital , Constantine appears to have toyed earlier with Serdica ( present @-@ day Sofia ) , as he was reported saying that " Serdica is my Rome " . Sirmium and Thessalonica were also considered . Eventually , however , Constantine decided to work on the Greek city of Byzantium , which offered the advantage of having already been extensively rebuilt on Roman patterns of urbanism , during the preceding century , by Septimius Severus and Caracalla , who had already acknowledged its strategic importance . The city was thus founded in 324 , dedicated on 11 May 330 and renamed Constantinopolis ( " Constantine 's City " or Constantinople in English ) . Special commemorative coins were issued in 330 to honor the event . The new city was protected by the relics of the True Cross , the Rod of Moses and other holy relics , though a cameo now at the Hermitage Museum also represented Constantine crowned by the tyche of the new city . The figures of old gods were either replaced or assimilated into a framework of Christian symbolism . Constantine built the new Church of the Holy Apostles on the site of a temple to Aphrodite . Generations later there was the story that a divine vision led Constantine to this spot , and an angel no one else could see , led him on a circuit of the new walls . The capital would often be compared to the ' old ' Rome as Nova Roma Constantinopolitana , the " New Rome of Constantinople " . 
