Istanbul History of Istanbul Museum
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The city that preceded modern Istanbul, Byzantium was founded in around 657BC, and quickly grew into an important trading centre for the eastern Mediterranean, until it was knocked down by the Romans around 1000 years later, and renamed New Rome, and then Constantinople after the then emperor.
The city became the seat of power for the Eastern Roman Empire, and many of the great buildings that were erected up to the city's peak in the 6th century such as the hippodrome are still visible to this day.
The Ottoman Empire conquered the city under Sultan Mehmet in 1453, and established the city as capital, renamed as Istanbul. Many of the mosques and great palaces in the city date from this era.
The empire began to disintegrate in 1832 when Greece became independent, and this was followed by Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and much of the Arab world, until the Crimean war, when British and French support of the Turks held off the Russian invasion.
After WW1, the break-up of the Ottoman Empire was complete, and the New Turkish Republic was born in 1923 with Ankara as capital.
Istanbul retained its mystique, and tourists began to discover the city again in the 1970s, and the industry reached a peak in the 1990s, before an earthquake in 1999 saw tens of thousands die under poorly constructed buildings.
Now, despite the war in Iraq, and occasional problems with those pesky fundamentalist terrorists, Istanbul has recovered, and once again is the main tourist draw of the country, and hotels are full more often than not.
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