Istanbul: City of Majesty at the Crossroads of the World

Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire was unable to burn Martin Luther at the stake because he needed the support of Protestant princes to defend against Suleiman’s invasion. Without the Ottoman threat, the Protestant Reformation might never have happened. Since Protestants were opposed to Crusades, Suleiman was very much in favor of Protestants—he even offered to protect Luther in Constantinople should he require it.

With nearly fifteen million inhabitants, Istanbul is today Europe’s largest city, and the fifth largest in the world.

Too important to abandon, too strategic to avoid, too beautiful to resist, Istanbul long drew to it the peoples of the Mediterranean, muddled them together in its streets and markets, and produced a community that is ever changing.

In Byzantion the people rejoiced and credited the victory to the divine assistance of Hecate, the Greek goddess of crossroads, a favorite in this city of passages. Shortly after Philip’s defeat, the Byzantine coins would be minted with the image of a moon and star, the symbol of Hecate. By pure coincidence, it is the same symbol that appears on flags across modern Istanbul.

Gonzáles de Clavijo was the first European to note that “the Greeks do not call it Constantinople as we do, but Escomboli.” This word was his hearing of eis tin Polin, Greek for “in/to the City.” Like New Yorkers who refer to Manhattan as “the city,” the Greeks used this familiar shorthand, while foreigners assumed it was a completely new name. The Turks thought the same, later modifying what they heard to “Istanbul.” In both cases, it means the same: “the City.”

The open-air reservoirs were so large that one of them, the Cistern of Aetius, is used today as a soccer stadium (modern-day Vefa Stadyumu).

Early colonists are generally too busy to write histories, leaving it to future generations to compose their own versions of their city’s foundation.

That column, which has been on outdoor public display for twenty-five hundred years, is today in Istanbul very near the Blue Mosque.

Though all other cities have their periods of government and are subject to the decays of time, Constantinople alone seems to claim a kind of immortality and will continue to be a city as long as humanity shall live either to inhabit it or rebuild it.

“Istanbul” is simply a Turkish hearing of the Greek phrase στην Πόλη, meaning “in or to the City.”