The terminal events surrounding the fall of great empires have long been studied, pondered and argued over. Edward Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” comes to mind as one of the best ...

Considering it took place some 500 years ago, the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 feels like it happened only yesterday -- at least in Istanbul. In recent years, an Ottoman history magazine ...

The Byzantine Empire considered itself to be the caretaker of the Christian religion. The emperor was chosen by God and God had chosen the empire as the wheel to spread Christianity. Christianity was ...

It's Istanbul, not Constantinople, that straddles the Bosporus Strait today. But more than half a millennium ago—on May 29, 1453—it was Constantinople, then the last bastion of the Roman Empire, that ...

Through Google Earth’s lens, we retrace the dramatic Fall of Constantinople in 1453. In just one minute, we chart the city’s imposing walls, the Ottoman siege led by Mehmed II, and the moment the ...

On May 29, 1453, Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, was captured by the Turks. In 1736 American patriot Patrick Henry was born in Hanover County, Va. In 1790 Rhode Island ratified the ...

We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn and work.

Melvyn Bragg discusses the 1453 siege of Constantinople. A bitter and bloody 53 days that ended a thousand years of the Byzantine Empire. Show more Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the siege of ...

L'Esprit Créateur, Vol. 53, No. 4, The Turk of Early Modern France (Winter 2013), pp. 124-138 (15 pages) Thanks to the Mellon Foundation and to the National Humanities Center for support in ...