yzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul - all three are names for a city with a great past and an interesting present. It was in its time the capital of two world empires which at first glance seem incompatible: the Eastern Roman Empire was Christian, imbued with European and occidental ideals and ideas, where as the Ottoman Empire was rooted in the traditions and rules of the newest world religion, Islam, born in Asia.

The Islamic conquerors, however, not only took possession of the country, they took over and adapted anything which seemed of value: Byzantine architecture, monasteries as models for their mosques, baths,cisterns, water supplies etc. Thus their capital became a bridge between East and West, and buildings from both eras and both cultures still stand impressively side by side today. The Bosphorus not only devides Europe and Asia, but also the city, which thus becomes a bridge between two continents and cultures. The Ottoman Empire had links and connections with three continents in all - Europe, Asia and North Africa.

On May 29, 1453 the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II rode into the conquered city of Constantinople, the capital and last stronghold of the Byzantine Empire, entered the Church of Hagia Sophia, and there prayed to Allah. The ancient capital of the Romen Empire of the East now lay under the Turkish sword, and a millennium of history had come to an end. Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul: the different names all describe the same and ever - changing city, but touch only facets of its fabled life - Greek, Romen, Byzantine and Moslem-that have symbolized magic and power for the peoples of the West and east.

Already a thriving commercial center in 431 B.C.E. at the start of the Peloponnesian War when it was allied with Athens against Sparta, Byzantium occupied the golden triangle of land at the confluence of the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Golden Horn and dominated the passages between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, Europe and Asia. The city was originally founded in 667 B.C.E. by Greeks from Megara. While the Romans held most of the Bosphorus region from 74 B.C.E. , Byzantium itself fell to Emperor Septimus Severus only in 196 C.E. during a fierce and bitter siege that resulted in the destruction of most of the city. Realizing the commercial and strategic importance of the site, however, Severus set about rebuilding the ancient Greek polis perched atop its acropolis on the Promontory and encircled it with a belt of walls that are vaguely mirrored today by the walls of the Topkapi Palace precint.

Soon after his accession in 324 Constantine the Great realized that the Roman state's true strengths lay in the population, culture, and wealth of the East. Contemplating the future strategic needs of the empire, he decided to move the capital from Rome to northwestern Asia Minor. After investigating several cites on the coast, including Troy, where he began building his city, he decided that Byzantium, with its seven hills and glorious, commanding position was the ideal site. In 330, therefore, he began work on his New Rome, stripping old Rome and many of the richest cities of the East of much of their wealth, best art, and costliest ornaments.

Constantinople, as his new city came to be known, soon became the greatest city of Rome, especially after the division of the Empire into East and West by Theodosius in 395. While its culture and language gradually and definitely became Greek, its inhabitants continued to call themselves Romanoi, Romans, and this is how they were known to subjects of the Empire and to its enemies for a millennium. The Roman empire of the East, what today we call the Byzantine Empire, outlived its western partner, which fell finally in 476, and continued to grow and to change for the next thousand years.