Title: This week in history: The Fall of Constantinople had profound consequences - Deseret News
Headings: This week in history: The Fall of Constantinople had profound consequences
This week in history: The Fall of Constantinople had profound consequences
Content: This week in history: The Fall of Constantinople had profound consequences - Deseret News
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World & Nation
This week in history: The Fall of Constantinople had profound consequences
By Deseret News May 29, 2013, 6:45pm MDT
Cody Carlson, For the Deseret News
On May 29, 1453 — 560 years ago this week — Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks. The fall of this great city signaled the end of the Byzantine Empire, the medieval incarnation of the Roman Empire, and saw the armies of Islam spread into Europe from Asia for the first time. In A.D. 330, the Roman Emperor Constantine founded the city of Constantinople on the Greek village of Byzantine to be the new imperial capital. Sitting on the Bosporus strait, which connects Europe and Asia, the new city was more easily defended than Rome, and it was a Christian city to reflect the emperor's religious preference. Like Rome, Constantinople had seven hills divided into 14 districts. For centuries, the city stood as the center of imperial power, even after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in A.D. 476. Historians refer to this medieval incarnation of the empire as Byzantine.