title: Benghazi

text: The oldest university in Libya is the University of Libya, founded by royal decree in 1955. It was initially housed in the royal Al Manar Palace before receiving its own campus in 1968. It was later split and became known as University of Benghazi. There are some private universities such as Libyan International Medical University.


title: Benghazi

text: Education in Benghazi, as throughout Libya, is compulsory and paid entirely by taxpayers. Compulsory education continues until ninth grade. There are many public primary and secondary schools scattered throughout the city, as well as some private schools.


title: Benghazi

text: University education is also paid entirely by taxpayers for all Libyan citizens in Benghazi. There are many other foreign schools such as Benghazi European School and private schools.


title: Benghazi

text: Benghazi is one of the sub-regions of the area referred to as Cyrenaica, the others being the Jebel Akhdar and the coastal plain running east of Apollonia. Cyrenaica is surrounded by desert on three sides, hence in ancient times the most accessible civilisation was to the North, across the Mediterranean, in Crete and Greece, only away.


title: Benghazi

text: Benghazi is surrounded by the "barr", arid steppe. The Jebel Akhdar, literally, "the Green Mountain", just north of Benghazi, rises to the east. Here the vegetation and climate is more Mediterranean in feel with none of the desert landscapes found further south. A large section of the western Jebel Akhdar is taken up by the fertile Marj plain. Further east is the second level of the Jebel Akhdar, between and over above sea level, often thickly wooded and cut by ravines. Annual rainfall here, especially around Cyrene, can reach . It was this fertile site northeast of Benghazi that the Greeks chose for their settlement. The soil in Benghazi is a rich red colour and very clayey. Sirocco winds are not uncommon in the city, and as such, many of Benghazi's smaller streets and buildings can be quite dusty.


title: Benghazi

text: To the north, below the steep cliffs of the plateau, lies a narrow belt of Mediterranean farmland. Olives and other Mediterranean fruits and vegetables are grown here. To the south, the forest and farmland gives way to juniper bush maquis and pre-desert scrub with some winter grazing.


title: Benghazi

text: Although Benghazi does not have a high percentage of green space per resident, there are a few public parks and green recreational areas in the city. Perhaps the most famous is the zoological garden and theme park in Al-Fuwayhat also known as Benghazi Zoo; the park is referred to locally as "al-Bosco", an Italian name for wood (as in "Belleau Wood", not as in "wood plank"). The park is a combination of a zoo with trees planted during Italian rule and which contains wild cats, primates, elephants, birds and other animals, and a small theme park containing electrical rides, added later in the 1980s as part of a redevelopment of the entire site. It is one of the most popular parks in Benghazi, and is very busy on public holidays, as well as amongst school children and scouts on outings.


title: Benghazi

text: On Gamal Abdel Nasser Street is 23 July Park, another large green space which faces the Tibesti Hotel and borders the waterfront. The park is popular amongst teenagers, and families on Thursday nights (as Friday is a day off work throughout Libya). Another large and popular park is al-Buduzira in North Benghazi on the al-'Uruba Road in al-Kwayfiya. The park surrounds a natural lake, and is more rugged in nature than the city parks. A section of al-Buduzira is also a water park with large slides, whilst the southern part of the park has picnic areas which are popular in the summers.


title: Benghazi

text: Benghazi has a warm semi-arid climate (Köppen climate classification "BSh") with hot and dry, prolonged summers and mild to cool, slightly wet winters. In the north of the city lies the Mediterranean-climate 'Jabal Al-Akhdar' (Green Mountains), and in the south the climate is becoming desert-like. Summers in Benghazi are hot and rainless, but with high levels of humidity. Winters are mild with occasional rain. Annual rainfall is low at per year. The city's local water supply is supplemented by groundwater transported from the aquifers of southern Libya along the Great Manmade River.


title: Benghazi

text: Benghazi, as the principal city of eastern Libya, is one of Libya's major economic centres. The city has an important port which is vital to the economy, as Libya imports many foodstuffs and manufactured products. Benghazi is also an industrial and commercial centre in Libya. Major manufactured goods include processed food, textiles, tanning, processed salt and construction materials, particularly cement; a large cement factory is located in al-Hawari. Food processing is based on local fish, imported goods, and the produce of irrigated coastal lowlands and the nearby Jabal al-Akdhar Mountains, including cereal, dates, olives, wool and meat.


title: Benghazi

text: Finance is also important to the city's economy, with the Libyan Bank of Commerce and Development maintaining branches in Benghazi; the Bank's headquarters is a high office tower on Gamal Abdel Nasser Street in el-Berka. Other large banks include the Central Bank of Libya office in the city centre.


title: Benghazi

text: The oil industry drives the city's commerce. Large national companies such as the Al-Brega Oil Marketing Company and the Arabian Gulf Oil Company are important to the city's economy and employ many people. An increase in consumer prices has been coupled with an increase in the importance of the retail sector to the city's economy. In recent years, international franchises such as United Colors of Benetton, H&M and Nike have opened in Benghazi.


title: Benghazi

text: Tourism is still in its very early stages in Libya. The industry is however growing in importance in Benghazi. The majority of tourists that visit Eastern Libya use Benghazi as a base for which to explore the Greek ruins in Cyrene or to make desert excursions south in Kufra. The two main hotels in the city are the Tibesti Hotel and Uzu Hotel, and several other hotels have opened in recent years to cater for increased demand. Handicrafts are found in the many souks in the city, but are of little significance to the economy.


title: Benghazi

text: Skanska built a good connection of speedways and flyovers in the decades after the Libyan revolution in 1969; this has made the transport of goods between Benghazi and other cities easier. Benghazi's air transport uses Benina International Airport; numerous daily flights leave for Tripoli and connections are also available to other African, Asian and European cities.


title: Benghazi

text: In April 2012, the Libyan economy ministry announced plans for creating a free trade area in Benghazi.


title: Benghazi

text: Benghazi is a transport hub in Eastern Libya and is an important city on the northern coastal road that crosses the country. An efficiently designed system of roads, bridges and underpasses cover Benghazi, however traffic jams and poorly maintained streets are not uncommon. A microbus system covers many areas of the city and has its base in Al-Funduq. National and international bus services also leave from Al-Fudnuq from the central bus station. , earthworks were underway in the city for a rail network which will traverse northern Libya.


title: Benghazi

text: The Benghazi port is a vital terminal for the region, and allows for the import and export of national and international goods and food products.


title: Benghazi

text: The city's road network is generally well designed. An efficient system of highways, flyovers, ringroads and underpasses serve the city, and allow for the transport of goods and vehicles. The roads are not always well-maintained however, and often have incorrect, poorly visible or no road markings, as well as potholes in some roads and inner-city streets. In recent years, a rapid increase in car ownership has meant that traffic jams, lack of parking spaces and overcrowding are also not uncommon, especially on smaller streets. Road accidents are also on the rise because of the increase in vehicles and the subsequent lax in attention given by authorities to dangerous driving. In a rare RTA conflict health study, road traffic accidents were studied during the period of the 2011 armed conflict, in which Benghazi was a focal point of events. It was found that while the number of road traffic accidents had decreased during the period of the war, the morbidity and mortality of the injured had increased significantly.


title: Benghazi

text: There is no systemised public transport system in Benghazi despite the city's size and significance. A popular system of microbuses has developed in recent years; bus journeys run on fixed routes and passengers can embark and disembark anywhere on the route. Most microbuses stop at Al-Funduq or have the end of Souq Al-Jarid in Al-Funduq as their final destination. National and international coach services depart and arrive at Benghazi's coach station at Al-Funduq with regular journeys to Tripoli, as well as international services to Cairo, Amman and Damascus.


title: Benghazi

text: Until the 1960s there were two small railways, built by the Italians, departing from Benghazi and served with classical "Littorine": Benghazi-Barce and Benghazi-Soluch. But recently huge railway plans were supported by Gaddafi: work started in September 2008 on a new railway network that would connect to major cities of western Libya at Sirte. Russian Railways is responsible for the three-year contract. In the future, a rail link may be built to both Tunisia and Egypt forming a North African coastal rail network.


title: Benghazi

text: The city is divided into many neighbourhoods, some of which were founded during Italian Colonial rule and many which have developed as a result of modern urban sprawl. The different neighbourhoods vary in their levels of economic prosperity, as well as their cultural, historic and social atmosphere. Generally, the city is roughly divided into the following areas: Central Benghazi (colloquially referred to as al-Blaad by locals) – includes the medina, and the old quarter, Central Districts which circle the downtown – Al-Sabri, Sidi Abayd, Sidi Hsayn, Al-Berka, Al-Salmani, Al-Hadaa'ik, Al-Fuwayhat and Al-Keesh, Central Suburbs – Al-Laythi, Bu Atni, Al-Quwarsha, Al-Hawari, Coastal Districts – Al-Kwayfiya (North), Garyounis, Bu-Fakhra and Jarrutha (South), and the Distant Suburbs – Gimeenis, Benina and Sidi Khalifa.


title: Benghazi

text: Central Benghazi is where the majority of Benghazi's historical monuments are located, and has the city's most popular tourist attractions. Virtually all of Benghazi's theatres, libraries, best clothing stores, markets and old mosques can be found there. The Italian quarter is also located in the centre. The central districts are mostly residential and commercial areas such as Sidi Hsayn. The central suburbs are almost entirely residential and more like little towns in their own right; Al-Quwarsha is a good example of this. The coastal districts (especially the southern districts) are where Benghazi's beaches can be found. Some sections have become more popular as residential areas in recent years (such as Qanfuda). These areas are still primarily recreational however, and many beach condominium resorts (known locally as chalets) have been built in previous years such as those at al-Nakheel beach, and the Nayrouz condominiums.


title: Benghazi

text: Benghazi is one of the cultural centres of Libya and is a base for tourists, visitors and academics in the region. Throughout its history, Benghazi has developed with a certain level of independence from the more Maghreb oriented capital Tripoli. This has influenced the city, and as such, the cultural atmosphere in Benghazi is more Arab in nature than that in Tripoli. An influx immigrants including Egyptian, Iraqi, Palestinian, Sudanese and Syrian immigrants have also influenced the city's culture to a certain extent in recent years.


title: Benghazi

text: The city centre contains a few local theatres, as well as the Dar al-Kutub National Library in Al-Funduq, where the works of popular local novelists like Sadeq Naihoum and Khalifa al-Fakhri can be found. Different architectural styles attest to the different empires that have controlled the city throughout history. Sport is also important in the city; two of Libya's most successful football clubs are based in Benghazi.


title: Benghazi

text: There is a variety of architectural styles in Benghazi, which reflect the number of times the city has changed hands throughout its history. Arab, Ottoman and Italian rule have influenced the different streetscapes, buildings and quarters in Benghazi.


title: Benghazi

text: Ancient architectural remains of the Greek and later Roman settlement of Berenice can be found by the Italian lighthouse. There is a trace of the 3rd century BC wall built by the Greeks, four Roman peristyle houses, six wine vats. A Byzantine church also exists on the site, with a mosaic still intact. These ruins formed the northern part of the ancient city, which extended south and east but now lies buried beneath the modern city.


title: Benghazi

text: The next oldest section of the city is the Medina quarter, which began to grow sometime under Medieval Arab rule, and is still intact today. This quarter stretches out from the Northern shores of the harbour, and covers an area roughly bounded by Ahmed Rafiq al-Mahdawi Street to the North-west, al-Jezayir Street to the South-east and 23 July Street to the South-west. The heart of the medina is Maydan al-Hurriya (Freedom Square); to the northeast of this is the covered Souq al-Jareed.


title: Benghazi

text: The largest Ottoman architectural monument in Benghazi is the late 19th-century Ottoman palace in El-Berka; built during the rule of Rashid Pasha II. The front elevation was completed in 1895, whilst the side sections were added later during Italian rule. The white and green structure houses 360 rooms; and is on a tract of land where Gamal Abdel Nasser Street meets al-Saqzali Street; south of the 28 March football stadium.


title: Benghazi

text: The house of Omar Pasha Mansour El Kikhia, an Ottoman Pasha from a prominent Benghazi family, represents a good example of Ottoman residential architecture with several balconies, stone archways, and an open courtyard containing a fountain. The home was recently restored, remodeled and converted into the Bait-al Medina al-Thaqafi museum.


title: Benghazi

text: Benghazi came under Italian rule in the early part of the 20th century. Some examples of Italianate, as well as modernist colonial architecture from this period remain today. Under the governorships of Generals Ernesto Mombelli and Attilio Teruzzi in the 1920s, the buildings commissioned in Benghazi had an eclectic architectural language that embodied a Western conception of Eastern architecture. An example of this is the Municipal palace built in 1924, which stands in Maydan al-Hurriya (Freedom Square). The building combines Moorish arches with Italianate motifs on the façade. Italians even did the first architectural plan of Benghazi. in the 1930s, with a new railway station and promenade.


title: Benghazi

text: The largest colonial building from this Italian period is the Benghazi Cathedral in Maydan El Catedraeya (Cathedral Square), which was built in the 1920s and has two large distinct domes.


title: Benghazi

text: Benghazi was heavily bombed during World War II, and so the majority of buildings in the city are examples of modern or contemporary architecture. The central business district was built mostly in the 1960s and 1970s with Libya's newfound oil wealth. The highest building in Benghazi is the Tibesti Hotel on Gamal Abdel Nasser Street built in 1989. Another prominent example of modern architecture in Benghazi is the Da'wah al-Islamiyah Building, which has a series of distinctive cubes piled in the shape of a pyramid.


title: Benghazi

text: Important colonial buildings designed during Italian rule include the Berenice Cinema (currently under renovation) which was designed Marcello Piacentini and Luigi Piccinato in 1928.


title: Benghazi

text: Benghazi is the second largest city in Libya, and as such, has some of the best sports facilities in the country. The city has various sporting centres of different standards, such as football stadia, beach clubs (where many water sports are played), as well as several other public and private facilities. Benghazi has hosted many national sports events throughout the years, as well as more significant international competitions such as the African Cup of Nations.


title: Benghazi

text: Football is the most-popular sport in Benghazi, and two of Libya's most-successful football clubs, Al-Ahly Benghazi and Al-Nasr Benghazi, are based in the city. The two teams have won the Libyan Premier League five times; Al Ahly four and Al Nasr only one. The most-important football event that took place in Benghazi was the 1982 African Cup of Nations. The city hosted six group games and a semifinal in the March 28 Stadium, Libya's second-largest stadium. The city will very likely be the scene of more games when Libya re-hosts the African Cup of Nations in 2013.


title: Benghazi

text: The largest sporting centre in Benghazi is the Medina al-Riyadhia (Sports City). The complex is situated just south of the city centre, and houses the 28 March Stadium, and the Slayman al Tharrat basketball stadium – several matches of the 2009 FIBA Africa Championship were hosted at the arena. The complex also has a sports hall for indoor sports, a tennis stadium and several small tennis courts. The facility was built in the 1950s and is therefore quite outdated; the stadia have nonetheless undergone maintenance work in recent years. Sports City was recently closed down for a complete redevelopment of the site. , the 28 March Stadium was undergoing demolition work, and a new 45,000 all seater stadium was to be constructed in its place. A second smaller stadium was to be built on-site, and the entire site was to undergo redevelopment before its reopening in 2011, and its use in the 2013 African Nations Cup.


title: Benghazi

text: The Eastern suburb of Sidi Khalifa accommodates an equestrian sports facility. The 'Martyrs of Benghazi's Riding Club' boasts a number of female members who, at least until 2016, engaged in sportive competition.


title: Benghazi

text: Benghazi is a coastal city, and its beaches are an important location for sporting activities. The coast at Jeliana is home to the Milaha Beach Club amongst others. Wind surfing and swimming are two of the most popular water sports. There are also several contact sport clubs in the city –judo and taekwondo are popular men's sports in Benghazi. In recent times, rugby sevens has seen great success with three clubs in the vicinity. Gyms have also become more popular in the city in recent years, because of a greater concern for healthy living amongst Libyans.


title: Benghazi

text: Food and drink is very important to the culture of the people of Benghazi, as it is in the rest of Libya. Many of the dishes and ingredients used are passed down as tradition from generation to generation. The main ingredients that are used in their cuisine are olive oil, garlic, palm dates, grains, and milk. These products are natural to this area, and these ingredients are very common to much of North Africa and the Mediterranean. Another tradition of Libyan culinary culture is tea. Tea from Benghazi has a uniquely thick, bitter taste. Tea drinking is a social activity that close friends and relatives usually take part in.


title: Benghazi

text: Benghazi is home to many distinctive dishes that can be prepared at home. Bazin is one of the most well known of these dishes. Bazin is a dish consisting of a small loaf of heated dough and a meat or vegetable sauce. The dough can be ripped into bite-sized pieces and dipped into the sauce. This dish uses essential ingredients such as garlic and oil. One common dessert that can be found in Benghazi is deep fried dates. These are often served with milk.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The Walls of Constantinople () are a series of defensive stone walls that have surrounded and protected the city of Constantinople (today Istanbul in Turkey) since its founding as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Constantine the Great. With numerous additions and modifications during their history, they were the last great fortification system of antiquity, and one of the most complex and elaborate systems ever built.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Initially built by Constantine the Great, the walls surrounded the new city on all sides, protecting it against attack from both sea and land. As the city grew, the famous double line of the Theodosian Walls was built in the 5th century. Although the other sections of the walls were less elaborate, they were, when well-manned, almost impregnable for any medieval besieger. They saved the city, and the Byzantine Empire with it, during sieges by the Avar-Sassanian coalition, Arabs, Rus', and Bulgars, among others. The advent of gunpowder siege cannons rendered the fortifications vulnerable, but cannon technology was not sufficiently advanced to capture the city on its own, and the walls could be repaired between reloading. Ultimately, the city fell from the sheer weight of numbers of the Ottoman forces on 29 May 1453 after a two-month siege.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The walls were largely maintained intact during most of the Ottoman period until sections began to be dismantled in the 19th century, as the city outgrew its medieval boundaries. Despite lack of maintenance, many parts of the walls survived and are still standing today. A large-scale restoration program has been underway since the 1980s.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: According to tradition, the city was founded as Byzantium by Greek colonists from Megara, led by the eponymous Byzas, around 658 BC. At the time the city consisted of a small region around an acropolis located on the easternmost hill (corresponding to the modern site of the Topkapı Palace). According to the late Byzantine "Patria of Constantinople", ancient Byzantium was enclosed by a small wall which began on the northern edge of the acropolis, extended west to the Tower of Eugenios, then went south and west towards the Strategion and the Baths of Achilles, continued south to the area known in Byzantine times as Chalkoprateia, and then turned, in the area of the Hagia Sophia, in a loop towards the northeast, crossed the regions known as Topoi and Arcadianae and reached the sea at the later quarter of Mangana. This wall was protected by 27 towers and had at least two landward gates, one which survived to become known as the Arch of Urbicius, and one where the Milion monument was later located. On the seaward side, the wall was much lower. Although the author of the "Patria" asserts that this wall dated to the time of Byzas, the French researcher Raymond Janin thinks it more likely that it reflects the situation after the city was rebuilt by the Spartan general Pausanias, who conquered the city in 479 BC. This wall is known to have been repaired, using tombstones, under the leadership of a certain Leo in 340 BC, against an attack by Philip II of Macedon.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Byzantium was relatively unimportant during the early Roman period. Contemporaries described it as wealthy, well peopled and well fortified, but this affluence came to an end due to its support for Pescennius Niger (r. 193–194) in his war against Septimius Severus (r. 193–211). According to the account of Cassius Dio ("Roman History", 75.10–14), the city held out against Severan forces for three years, until 196, with its inhabitants resorting even to throwing bronze statues at the besiegers when they ran out of other projectiles. Severus punished the city harshly: the strong walls were demolished and the city was deprived of its civic status, being reduced to a mere village dependent on Heraclea Perinthus. However, appreciating the city's strategic importance, Severus eventually rebuilt it and endowed it with many monuments, including a Hippodrome and the Baths of Zeuxippus, as well as a new set of walls, located some 300–400 m to the west of the old ones. Little is known of the Severan Wall save for a short description of its course by Zosimus ("New History", II.30.2–4) and that its main gate was located at the end of a porticoed avenue (the first part of the later "Mese") and shortly before the entrance of the later Forum of Constantine. The wall seems to have extended from near the modern Galata Bridge in the Eminönü quarter south through the vicinity of the Nuruosmaniye Mosque to curve around the southern wall of the Hippodrome, and then going northeast to meet the old walls near the Bosporus. The "Patria" also mention the existence of another wall during the siege of Byzantium by Constantine the Great (r. 306–337) during the latter's conflict with Licinius (r. 308–324), in 324. The text mentions that a fore-wall ("proteichisma") ran near the Philadephion, located at about the middle of the later, Constantinian city, suggesting the expansion of the city beyond the Severan Wall by this time.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Like Severus before him, Constantine began to punish the city for siding with his defeated rival, but soon he too realized the advantages of Byzantium's location. During 324–336 the city was thoroughly rebuilt and inaugurated on 11 May 330 under the name of “New Rome” or “Second Rome”. Eventually, the city would most commonly be referred to as Constantinople, the "City of Constantine", in dedication to its founder (Gk. Κωνσταντινούπολις, "Konstantinoupolis"). New Rome was protected by a new wall about 2.8 km (15 "stadia") west of the Severan wall. Constantine's fortification consisted of a single wall, reinforced with towers at regular distances, which began to be constructed in 324 and was completed under his son Constantius II (r. 337–361). Only the approximate course of the wall is known: it began at the Church of St. Anthony at the Golden Horn, near the modern Atatürk Bridge, ran southwest and then southwards, passed east of the great open cisterns of Mocius and of Aspar, and ended near the Church of the Theotokos of the Rhabdos on the Propontis coast, somewhere between the later sea gates of St. Aemilianus and Psamathos.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Already by the early 5th century, Constantinople had expanded outside the Constantinian Wall in the extramural area known as the "Exokionion" or "Exakionion". The wall survived during much of the Byzantine period, even though it was replaced by the Theodosian Walls as the city's primary defense. An ambiguous passage refers to extensive damage to the city's "inner wall" from an earthquake on 25 September 478, which likely refers to the Constantinian wall. When repairs were being undertaken, to prevent an invasion by Atilla, the Blues and Greens, the supporters of chariot-racing teams, supplied 16,000 men between them for the building effort.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Theophanes the Confessor reports renewed earthquake damage in 557. It appears that large parts survived relatively intact until the 9th century: the 11th-century historian Kedrenos records that the "wall at Exokionion", likely a portion of the Constantinian wall, collapsed in an earthquake in 867. Only traces of the wall appear to have survived in later ages, although Van Millingen states that some parts survived in the region of the "İsakapı" until the early 19th century. The recent construction of Yenikapı Transfer Center has unearthed a section of the foundation of the wall of Constantine.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The names of a number of gates of the Constantinian Wall survive, but scholars debate their identity and exact location.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The Old Golden Gate (, ), known also as the Xerolophos Gate and the Gate of Saturninus, is mentioned in the "Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae", which further states that the city wall itself in the region around it was "ornately decorated". The gate stood somewhere on the southern slopes of the Seventh Hill. Its construction is often attributed to Constantine, but is in fact of uncertain age. It survived until the 14th century, when the Byzantine scholar Manuel Chrysoloras described it as being built of "wide marble blocks with a lofty opening", and crowned by a kind of stoa. In late Byzantine times, a painting of the Crucifixion was allegedly placed on the gate, leading to its later Ottoman name, "İsakapı" ("Gate of Jesus"). It was destroyed by an earthquake in 1509, but its approximate location is known through the presence of the nearby "İsakapı Mescidi" mosque.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The identity and location of the Gate of At[t]alos (, "Porta At[t]alou") are unclear. Cyril Mango identifies it with the Old Golden Gate; van Millingen places it on the Seventh Hill, at a height probably corresponding to one of the later gates of the Theodosian Wall in that area; and Raymond Janin places it further north, across the Lycus and near the point where the river passed under the wall. In earlier centuries, it was decorated with many statues, including one of Constantine, which fell down in an earthquake in 740.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The only gate whose location is known with certainty, aside from the Old Golden Gate, is the Gate of Saint Aemilianus (, "Porta tou hagiou Aimilianou"), named in Turkish "Davutpaşa Kapısı". It lay at the juncture with the sea walls, and served the communication with the coast. According to the "Chronicon Paschale", the Church of St Mary of Rhabdos, where the rod of Moses was kept, stood next to the gate.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The Old Gate of the Prodromos (, "Palaia Porta tou Prodromou"), named after the nearby Church of St John the Baptist (called "Prodromos", "the Forerunner", in Greek), is another unclear case. Van Millingen identifies it with the Old Golden Gate, while Janin considers it to have been located on the northern slope of the Seventh Hill.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The last known gate is the Gate of Melantias (, "Porta tēs Melantiados"), whose location is also debated. Van Millingen considered it to be a gate of the Theodosian Wall (the Pege Gate), while more recently, Janin and Mango have rebutted this, suggesting that it was located on the Constantinian Wall. While Mango identifies it with the Gate of the Prodromos, Janin considers the name to have been a corruption of the "ta Meltiadou" quarter, and places the gate to the west of the Mocius cistern. Other authors identified it with the Gate of Adrianople (A. M. Schneider) or with the Gate of Rhesios (A. J. Mordtmann).


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The double Theodosian Walls (, "teichos Theodosiakon"), located about 2 km to the west of the old Constantinian Wall, were erected during the reign of Emperor Theodosius II (r. 402–450), after whom they were named. The work was carried out in two phases, with the first phase erected during Theodosius' minority under the direction of Anthemius, the praetorian prefect of the East, and was finished in 413 according to a law in the "Codex Theodosianus". An inscription discovered in 1993 however records that the work lasted for nine years, indicating that construction had already begun ca. 404/405, in the reign of Emperor Arcadius (r. 383–408). This initial construction consisted of a single curtain wall with towers, which now forms the inner circuit of the Theodosian Walls.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Both the Constantinian and the original Theodosian walls were severely damaged in two earthquakes, on 25 September 437 and 6 November 447. The latter was especially powerful, and destroyed large parts of the wall, including 57 towers. Subsequent earthquakes, including another major one in January 448, compounded the damage. Theodosius II ordered the praetorian prefect Constantine to supervise the repairs, made all the more urgent as the city was threatened by the presence of Attila the Hun in the Balkans. Employing the city's "Circus factions" in the work, the walls were restored in a record 60 days, according to the Byzantine chroniclers and three inscriptions found "in situ". It is at this date that the majority of scholars believe the second, outer wall to have been added, as well as a wide moat opened in front of the walls, but the validity of this interpretation is questionable; the outer wall was possibly an integral part of the original fortification concept.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Throughout their history, the walls were damaged by earthquakes and floods of the Lycus river. Repairs were undertaken on numerous occasions, as testified by the numerous inscriptions commemorating the emperors or their servants who undertook to restore them. The responsibility for these repairs rested on an official variously known as the Domestic of the Walls or the Count of the Walls (, "Domestikos/Komēs tōn teicheōn"), who employed the services of the city's populace in this task. After the Latin conquest of 1204, the walls fell increasingly into disrepair, and the revived post-1261 Byzantine state lacked the resources to maintain them, except in times of direct threat.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: In their present state, the Theodosian Walls stretch for about 5.7 km from south to north, from the "Marble Tower" (), also known as the "Tower of Basil and Constantine" (Gk. "Pyrgos Basileiou kai Kōnstantinou") on the Propontis coast to the area of the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus (Tr. "Tekfur Sarayı") in the Blachernae quarter. The outer wall and the moat terminate even earlier, at the height of the Gate of Adrianople. The section between the Blachernae and the Golden Horn does not survive, since the line of the walls was later brought forward to cover the suburb of Blachernae, and its original course is impossible to ascertain as it lies buried beneath the modern city.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: From the Sea of Marmara, the wall turns sharply to the northeast, until it reaches the Golden Gate, at about 14 m above sea level. From there and until the Gate of Rhegion the wall follows a more or less straight line to the north, climbing the city's Seventh Hill. From there the wall turns sharply to the northeast, climbing up to the Gate of St. Romanus, located near the peak of the Seventh Hill at some 68 m above sea level. From there the wall descends into the valley of the river Lycus, where it reaches its lowest point at 35 m above sea level. Climbing the slope of the Sixth Hill, the wall then rises up to the Gate of Charisius or Gate of Adrianople, at some 76 m height. From the Gate of Adrianople to the Blachernae, the walls fall to a level of some 60 m. From there the later walls of Blachernae project sharply to the west, reaching the coastal plain at the Golden Horn near the so-called Prisons of Anemas.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The Theodosian Walls consist of the main inner wall (μέγα τεῖχος, "mega teichos", "great wall"), separated from the lower outer wall (, "exō teichos" or μικρὸν τεῖχος, "mikron teichos", "small wall") by a terrace, the "peribolos" (περίβολος). Between the outer wall and the moat (, "souda") there stretched an outer terrace, the "parateichion" (), while a low breastwork crowned the moat's eastern escarpment. Access to both terraces was possible through posterns on the sides of the walls' towers.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The inner wall is a solid structure, 4.5–6 m thick and 12 m high. It is faced with carefully cut limestone blocks, while its core is filled with mortar made of lime and crushed bricks. Between seven and eleven bands of brick, approximately 40 cm thick, traverse the structure, not only as a form of decoration, but also strengthening the cohesion of the structure by bonding the stone façade with the mortar core, and increasing endurance to earthquakes. The wall was strengthened with 96 towers, mainly square but also a few octagonal ones, three hexagonal and a single pentagonal one. They were 15–20 m tall and 10–12 m wide, and placed at irregular distances, according to the rise of the terrain: the intervals vary between 21 and 77 m, although most curtain wall sections measure between 40 and 60 meters. Each tower had a battlemented terrace on the top. Its interior was usually divided by a floor into two chambers, which did not communicate with each other. The lower chamber, which opened through the main wall to the city, was used for storage, while the upper one could be entered from the wall's walkway, and had windows for view and for firing projectiles. Access to the wall was provided by large ramps along their side. The lower floor could also be accessed from the "peribolos" by small posterns. Generally speaking, most of the surviving towers of the main wall have been rebuilt either in Byzantine or in Ottoman times, and only the foundations of some are of original Theodosian construction. Furthermore, while until the Komnenian period the reconstructions largely remained true to the original model, later modifications ignored the windows and embrasures on the upper store and focused on the tower terrace as the sole fighting platform.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The outer wall was 2 m thick at its base, and featured arched chambers on the level of the "peribolos", crowned with a battlemented walkway, reaching a height of 8.5–9 m. Access to the outer wall from the city was provided either through the main gates or through small posterns on the base of the inner wall's towers. The outer wall likewise had towers, situated approximately midway between the inner wall's towers, and acting in supporting role to them. They are spaced at 48–78 m, with an average distance of 50–66 m. Only 62 of the outer wall's towers survive. With few exceptions, they are square or crescent-shaped, 12–14 m tall and 4 m wide. They featured a room with windows on the level of the "peribolos", crowned by a battlemented terrace, while their lower portions were either solid or featured small posterns, which allowed access to the outer terrace. The outer wall was a formidable defensive edifice in its own right: in the sieges of 1422 and 1453, the Byzantines and their allies, being too few to hold both lines of wall, concentrated on the defence of the outer wall.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The moat was situated at a distance of about 20 m from the outer wall. The moat itself was over 20 m wide and as much as 10 m deep, featuring a 1.5 m tall crenellated wall on the inner side, serving as a first line of defence. Transverse walls cross the moat, tapering towards the top so as not to be used as bridges. Some of them have been shown to contain pipes carrying water into the city from the hill country to the city's north and west. Their role has therefore been interpreted as that of aqueducts for filling the moat and as dams dividing it into compartments and allowing the water to be retained over the course of the walls. According to Alexander van Millingen, there is little direct evidence in the accounts of the city's sieges to suggest that the moat was ever actually flooded. In the sections north of the Gate of St. Romanus, the steepness of the slopes of the Lycus valley made the construction maintenance of the moat problematic; it is probable therefore that the moat ended at the Gate of St. Romanus, and did not resume until after the Gate of Adrianople.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The weakest section of the wall was the so-called "Mesoteichion" (Μεσοτείχιον, "Middle Wall"). Modern scholars are not in agreement over the extent of this portion of the wall, which has been variously defined from as narrowly as the stretch between the Gate of St. Romanus and the Fifth Military Gate (A.M. Schneider) to as broad as from the Gate of Rhegion to the Fifth Military Gate (B. Tsangadas) or from the Gate of St. Romanus to the Gate of Adrianople (A. van Millingen).


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The walls survived the entire Ottoman period and appeared in travelogues of foreign visitors to Constantinople/Istanbul. A 16th century Chinese geographical treatises, for example, recorded that "Its city has two walls. a sovereign prince lives in the city ..."


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The wall contained nine main gates, which pierced both the inner and the outer walls, and a number of smaller posterns. The exact identification of several gates is debatable for a number of reasons. The Byzantine chroniclers provide more names than the number of the gates, the original Greek names fell mostly out of use during the Ottoman period, and literary and archaeological sources provide often contradictory information. Only three gates, the Golden Gate, the Gate of Rhegion and the Gate of Charisius, can be established directly from the literary evidence.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: In the traditional nomenclature, established by Philipp Anton Dethier in 1873, the gates are distinguished into the "Public Gates" and the "Military Gates", which alternated over the course of the walls. According to Dethier's theory, the former were given names and were open to civilian traffic, leading across the moat on bridges, while the latter were known by numbers, restricted to military use, and only led to the outer sections of the walls. Today this division is, if at all, retained only as a historiographical convention. First, there is sufficient reason to believe that several of the "Military Gates" were also used by civilian traffic. In addition, a number of them have proper names, and the established sequence of numbering them, based on their perceived correspondence with the names of certain city quarters lying between the Constantinian and Theodosian walls which have numerical origins, has been shown to be erroneous: for instance, the "Deuteron", the "Second" quarter, was not located in the southwest behind the Gate of the "Deuteron" or "Second Military Gate" as would be expected, but in the northwestern part of the city.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The gate is a small postern, which lies at the first tower of the land walls, at the junction with the sea wall. It features a wreathed "Chi-Rhō" Christogram above it. It was known in late Ottoman times as the "Tabak Kapı".


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Following the walls from south to north, the Golden Gate (, "Chryseia Pylē"; ; ), is the first gate to be encountered. It was the main ceremonial entrance into the capital, used especially for the occasions of a triumphal entry of an emperor into the capital on the occasion of military victories or other state occasions such as coronations. On rare occasions, as a mark of honor, the entry through the gate was allowed to non-imperial visitors: papal legates (in 519 and 868) and, in 710, to Pope Constantine. The Gate was used for triumphal entries until the Komnenian period; thereafter, the only such occasion was the entry of Michael VIII Palaiologos into the city on 15 August 1261, after its reconquest from the Latins. With the progressive decline in Byzantium's military fortunes, the gates were walled up and reduced in size in the later Palaiologan period, and the complex converted into a citadel and refuge. The Golden Gate was emulated elsewhere, with several cities naming their principal entrance thus, for instance Thessaloniki (also known as the Vardar Gate) or Antioch (the Gate of Daphne), as well as the Kievan Rus', who built monumental "Golden Gates" at Kiev and Vladimir. The entrance to San Francisco Bay in California was similarly named the Golden Gate in the middle of the nineteenth century, in a distant historical tribute to Byzantium.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The date of the gate's construction is uncertain, with scholars divided between Theodosius I and Theodosius II. Earlier scholars favored the former, but the current majority view tends to the latter, meaning that the gate was constructed as an integral part of the Theodosian Walls. The debate has been carried over to a Latin inscription in metal letters, now lost, which stood above the doors and commemorated their gilding in celebration of the defeat of an unnamed usurper:


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Curiously, while the legend has not been reported by any known Byzantine author, an investigation of the surviving holes wherein the metal letters were riveted verified its accuracy. It also showed that the first line stood on the western face of the arch, while the second on the eastern. According to the current view, this refers to the usurper Joannes (r. 423–425), while according to the supporters of the traditional view, it indicates the gate's construction as a free-standing triumphal arch in 388–391 to commemorate the defeat of the usurper Magnus Maximus (r. 383–388), and which was only later incorporated into the Theodosian Walls.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The gate, built of large square blocks of polished white marble fitted together without cement, has the form of a triumphal arch with three arched gates, the middle one larger than the two others. The gate is flanked by large square towers, which form the 9th and 10th towers of the inner Theodosian wall. With the exception of the central portal, the gate remained open to everyday traffic. The structure was richly decorated with numerous statues, including a statue of Theodosius I on an elephant-drawn quadriga on top, echoing the "Porta Triumphalis" of Rome, which survived until it fell down in the 740 Constantinople earthquake. Other sculptures were a large cross, which fell in an earthquake in 561 or 562; a Victory, which was cast down in the reign of Michael III; and a crowned Fortune of the city. In 965, Nikephoros II Phokas installed the captured bronze city gates of Mopsuestia in the place of the original ones.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The main gate itself was covered by an outer wall, pierced by a single gate, which in later centuries was flanked by an ensemble of reused marble reliefs. According to descriptions of Pierre Gilles and English travelers from the 17th century, these reliefs were arranged in two tiers, and featured mythological scenes, including the Labours of Hercules. These reliefs, lost since the 17th century with the exception of some fragments now in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, were probably put in place in the 9th or 10th centuries to form the appearance of a triumphal gate. According to other descriptions, the outer gate was also topped by a statue of Victory, holding a crown.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Despite its ceremonial role, the Golden Gate was one of the stronger positions along the walls of the city, withstanding several attacks during the various sieges. With the addition of transverse walls on the "peribolos" between the inner and outer walls, it formed a virtually separate fortress. Its military value was recognized by John VI Kantakouzenos (r. 1347–1354), who records that it was virtually impregnable, capable of holding provisions for three years and defying the whole city if need be. He repaired the marble towers and garrisoned the fort, but had to surrender it to John V Palaiologos (r. 1341–1391) when he abdicated in 1354. John V undid Kantakouzenos' repairs and left it unguarded, but in 1389–90 he too rebuilt and expanded the fortress, erecting two towers behind the gate and extending a wall some 350 m to the sea walls, thus forming a separate fortified enceinte inside the city to serve as a final refuge. In the event, John V was soon after forced to flee there from a coup led by his grandson, John VII. The fort held out successfully in the subsequent siege that lasted several months, and in which cannons were possibly employed. In 1391 John V was compelled to raze the fort by Sultan Bayezid I (r. 1389–1402), who otherwise threatened to blind his son Manuel, whom he held captive. Emperor John VIII Palaiologos (r. 1425–1448) attempted to rebuild it in 1434, but was thwarted by Sultan Murad II.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: According to one of the many Greek legends about the Constantinople's fall to the Ottomans, when the Turks entered the city, an angel rescued the emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos, turned him into marble and placed him in a cave under the earth near the Golden Gate, where he waits to be brought to life again to conquer the city back for Christians. The legend explained the later walling up of the gate as a Turkish precaution against this prophecy.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: After his conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Mehmed II built a new fort in 1458. By adding three larger towers to the four pre-existing ones (towers 8 to 11) on the inner Theodosian wall, he formed the Fortress of the Seven Towers ( or "Zindanları"). It lost its function as a gate, and for much of the Ottoman era, it was used as a treasury, archive, and state prison. It eventually became a museum in 1895.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The Xylokerkos or Xerokerkos Gate (), now known as the Belgrade Gate ("Belgrat Kapısı"), lies between towers 22 and 23. Alexander van Millingen identified it with the Second Military Gate, which is located further north. Its name derives from the fact that it led to a wooden "circus" (amphitheatre) outside the walls. The gate complex is approximately 12 m wide and almost 20 m high, while the gate itself spans 5 m.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: According to a story related by Niketas Choniates, in 1189 the gate was walled off by Emperor Isaac II Angelos, because according to a prophecy, it was this gate that Western Emperor Frederick Barbarossa would enter the city through. It was re-opened in 1346, but closed again before the siege of 1453 and remained closed until 1886, leading to its early Ottoman name, "Kapalı Kapı" ("Closed Gate").


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The gate () is located between towers 30 and 31, little remains of the original gate, and the modern reconstruction may not be accurate.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The Gate of the Spring or Pēgē Gate ( in Greek) was named after a popular monastery outside the Walls, the "Zōodochos Pēgē" ("Life-giving Spring") in the modern suburb of Balıklı.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Its modern Turkish name, Gate of Selymbria (Tr. "Silivri Kapısı" or "Silivrikapı", Gk. ), appeared in Byzantine sources shortly before 1453. It lies between the heptagonal towers 35 and 36, which were extensively rebuilt in later Byzantine times: its southern tower bears an inscription dated to 1439 commemorating repairs carried out under John VIII Palaiologos. The gate arch was replaced in the Ottoman period. In addition, in 1998 a subterranean basement with 4th/5th century reliefs and tombs was discovered underneath the gate.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Van Millingen identifies this gate with the early Byzantine Gate of Melantias (Πόρτα Μελαντιάδος), but more recent scholars have proposed the identification of the latter with one of the gates of the city's original Constantinian Wall (see above).


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: It was through this gate that the forces of the Empire of Nicaea, under General Alexios Strategopoulos, entered and retook the city from the Latins on 25 July 1261.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The Third Military Gate (), named after the quarter of the "Triton" ("the Third") that lies behind it, is situated shortly after the Pege Gate, exactly before the C-shaped section of the walls known as the ""Sigma"", between towers 39 and 40. It has no Turkish name, and is of middle or late Byzantine construction. The corresponding gate in the outer wall was preserved until the early 20th century, but has since disappeared. It is very likely that this gate is to be identified with the Gate of Kalagros ().


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Modern "Yeni Mevlevihane Kapısı", located between towers 50 and 51 is commonly referred to as the Gate of Rhegion () in early modern texts, allegedly named after the suburb of Rhegion (modern Küçükçekmece), or as the Gate of Rhousios () after the hippodrome faction of the Reds (, "rhousioi") which was supposed to have taken part in its repair. From Byzantine texts it appears that the correct form is Gate of Rhesios (), named according to the 10th-century "Suda" lexicon after an ancient general of Greek Byzantium. A.M. Schneider also identifies it with the Gate of Myriandr[i]on or Polyandrion ("Place of Many Men"), possibly a reference to its proximity to a cemetery. It is the best-preserved of the gates, and retains substantially unaltered from its original, 5th-century appearance.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The so-called Fourth Military Gate stands between towers 59 and 60, and is currently walled up. Recently, it has been suggested that this gate is actually the Gate of St. Romanus, but the evidence is uncertain.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The Gate of St. Romanus () was named so after a nearby church and lies between towers 65 and 66. It is known in Turkish as "Topkapı", the "Cannon Gate", after the great Ottoman cannon, the "Basilic", that was placed opposite it during the 1453 siege. With a gatehouse of 26.5 m, it is the second-largest gate after the Golden Gate. According to conventional wisdom, it is here that Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Byzantine emperor, was killed on 29 May 1453.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The Fifth Military Gate () lies immediately to the north of the Lycus stream, between towers 77 and 78, and is named after the quarter of the "Pempton" ("the Fifth") around the Lycus. It is heavily damaged, with extensive late Byzantine or Ottoman repairs evident. It is also identified with the Byzantine Gate of [the Church of] St. Kyriake, and called "Sulukulekapı" ("Water-Tower Gate") or "Hücum Kapısı" ("Assault Gate") in Turkish, because there the decisive breakthrough was achieved on the morning of 29 May 1453. In the late 19th century, it appears as the "Örülü kapı" ("Walled Gate").


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Some earlier scholars, like J. B. Bury and Kenneth Setton, identify this gate as the "Gate of St. Romanus" mentioned in the texts on the final siege and fall of the city. If this theory is correct, the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI, died in the vicinity of this gate during the final assault of 29 May 1453. Support to this theory comes from the fact that the particular gate is located at a far weaker section of the walls than the "Cannon Gate", and the most desperate fighting naturally took place here.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The Gate of Char[i]sius (), named after the nearby early Byzantine monastery founded by a "vir illustris" of that name, was, after the Golden Gate, the second-most important gate. In Turkish it is known as "Edirnekapı" ("Adrianople Gate"), and it is here where Mehmed II made his triumphal entry into the conquered city. This gate stands on top of the sixth hill, which was the highest point of the old city at 77 meters. It has also been suggested as one of the gates to be identified with the Gate of Polyandrion or Myriandrion (), because it led to a cemetery outside the Walls. The last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI, established his command here in 1453.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Known posterns are the "Yedikule Kapısı", a small postern after the Yedikule Fort (between towers 11 and 12), and the gates between towers 30/31, already walled up in Byzantine times, and 42/43, just north of the ""Sigma"". On the "Yedikule Kapısı", opinions vary as to its origin: some scholars consider it to date already to Byzantine times, while others consider it an Ottoman addition.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: According to the historian Doukas, on the morning of 29 May 1453, the small postern called "Kerkoporta" was left open by accident, allowing the first fifty or so Ottoman troops to enter the city. The Ottomans raised their banner atop the Inner Wall and opened fire on the Greek defenders of the "peribolos" below. This spread panic, beginning the rout of the defenders and leading to the fall of the city. In 1864, the remains of a postern located on the Outer Wall at the end of the Theodosian Walls, between tower 96 and the so-called Palace of the Porphyrogenitus, were discovered and identified with the Kerkoporta by the Greek scholar A.G. Paspates. Later historians, like van Millingen and Steven Runciman have accepted this theory as well. But excavations at the site have uncovered no evidence of a corresponding gate in the Inner Wall (now vanished) in that area, and it may be that Doukas' story is either invention or derived from an earlier legend concerning the Xylokerkos Gate, which several earlier scholars also equated with the "Kerkoporta".


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The Theodosian Walls were without a doubt among the most important defensive systems of Late Antiquity. Indeed, in the words of the "Cambridge Ancient History", they were "perhaps the most successful and influential city walls ever built – they allowed the city and its emperors to survive and thrive for more than a millennium, against all strategic logic, on the edge of [an] extremely unstable and dangerous world...".


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: With the advent of siege cannons, such fortifications were becoming obsolete, but their massive size still provided effective defence, as demonstrated during the Second Ottoman Siege in 1422.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Even in the final siege, which led to the fall of the city to the Ottomans three decades later (in 1453), the defenders, severely outnumbered, still managed to repeatedly counter Turkish attempts at undermining the walls, repulse several frontal attacks, and restore the damage from the siege cannons for almost two months. Finally, on 29 May, the decisive attack was launched, and when the Genoese general Giovanni Giustiniani was wounded and withdrew, causing a panic among the defenders, the walls were taken. After the capture of the city, Mehmed had the walls repaired in short order among other massive public works projects, and they were kept in repair during the first centuries of Ottoman rule.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The Walls of Blachernae connect the Theodosian Walls, which terminate at the height of the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus (), with the sea wall at the Golden Horn. They consist of a series of single walls built in different periods, which cover the suburb of Blachernae. Generally they are about 12–15 meters in height, thicker than the Theodosian Walls and with more closely spaced towers. Situated on a steep slope, they lacked a moat, except on their lower end towards the Golden Horn, where Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos had dug one.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The question of the original fortifications in this area has been examined by several scholars, and several theories have been proposed as to their course. It is known from the "Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae" that the XIV region, which comprised Blachernae, stood apart and was enclosed all around by a wall of its own. Further it is recorded that originally, and at least as late as the Avar-Persian siege of 626, when they were burned down, the important sanctuaries of Panagia Blachernitissa and St. Nicholas lay just outside the quarter's fortifications. Traces of the quarter's walls have been preserved, running from the area of the Porphyrogenitus Palace in straight line to the so-called Prison of Anemas. The original fortified quarter can thereby be roughly traced to have comprised the two northern spurs of the city's Seventh Hill in a triangle, stretching from the Porphyrogenitus Palace to the Anemas Prison, from there to the church of St. Demetrios Kanabos and thence back to the Porphyrogenitus Palace. These fortifications were apparently older than the Theodosian Walls, probably dating to sometime in the 4th century, and were then connected to the new city walls under Theodosius II, with the western wall forming the outer face of the city's defenses and the eastern wall fell into disrepair.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Today, the Theodosian Walls are connected in the vicinity of the Porphyrogenitus Palace with a short wall, which features a postern, probably the postern of the Porphyrogenitus () recorded by John VI Kantakouzenos, and extends from the Palace to the first tower of the so-called Wall of Manuel Komnenos. As recorded by the historian Niketas Choniates, that wall was built by Emperor Manuel I Komnenos (r. 1143–1180) as a protection to the imperial Palace of Blachernae, since the late 11th century the emperors' preferred residence. It is an architecturally excellent fortification, consisting of a series of arches closed on their outer face, built with masonry larger than usual and thicker than the Theodosian Walls, measuring some 5 m at the top. It features eight round and octagonal towers, while the last is square. The wall stretches for 220 m, beginning at an almost right angle from the line of the Theodosian Walls, going westward up to the third tower and then turning sharply north. The quality of the wall's construction was shown in the final Ottoman siege, when repeated attacks, intensive bombardment (including the large bombard of Orban) and attempts at undermining it came to naught. The Komnenian wall lacks a moat, since the difficult terrain of the area makes it unnecessary. The wall features one postern, between the second and third towers, and one large gate, the "Eğri Kapı" ("Crooked Gate"), between the sixth and seventh towers. Its Turkish name comes from the sharp bend of the road in front of it to pass around a tomb which is supposed to belong to Hazret Hafiz, a companion of Muhammad who died there during the first Arab siege of the city. It is usually, but not conclusively, identified with the Byzantine Kaligaria Gate (, "porta en tois Kaligariois"), the "Gate of the Bootmakers' Quarter" (cf. Latin "caliga", "sandal").


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: From the last tower of the Wall of Manuel Komnenos to the so-called Prison of Anemas stretches another wall, some 150 m in length, with four square towers. It is probably of later date, and of markedly inferior quality than the Komnenian wall, being less thick and with smaller stones and brick tiles utilized in its construction. It also bears inscriptions commemorating repairs in 1188, 1317 and 1441. A walled-up postern after the second tower is commonly identified with the Gyrolimne Gate (, "pylē tēs Gyrolimnēs"), named after the "Argyra Limnē", the "Silver Lake", which stood at the head of the Golden Horn. It probably serviced the Blachernae Palace, as evidenced by its decoration with three imperial busts. Schneider however suggests that the name could refer rather to the "Eğri Kapı".


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Then comes the outer wall of the Anemas Prison, which connects to a double stretch of walls. The outer wall is known as the Wall of Leo, as it was constructed by Leo V the Armenian (r. 813–820) in 813 to safeguard against the siege by the Bulgarian ruler Krum. This wall was then extended to the south by Michael II (r. 820–829). The wall is a relatively light structure, less than 3 m thick, buttressed by arches which support its parapet and featuring four towers and numerous loopholes. Behind the Leonine Wall lies an inner wall, which was renovated and strengthened by the additions of three particularly fine hexagonal towers by Emperor Theophilos (r. 829–842). The two walls stand some 26 m apart and are pierced by a gate each, together comprising the Gate of Blachernae (, "porta tōn Blachernōn"). The two walls form a fortified enclosure, called the "Brachionion" or "Brachiolion" ("bracelet") of Blachernae () by the Byzantines, and known after the Ottoman capture of the city in Greek as the "Pentapyrgion" (Πενταπύργιον, "Five Towers"), in allusion to the "Yedikule" (Gk. "Heptapyrgion") fortress. The inner wall is traditionally identified by scholars like van Millingen and Janin with the Wall of Heraclius, built by Emperor Heraclius (r. 610–641) after the Avar-Persian siege to enclose and protect the Church of the Blachernitissa. Schneider identified it in part with the "Pteron" (Πτερόν, "wing"), built at the time of Theodosius II to cover the northern flank of the Blachernae (hence its alternate designation as "proteichisma", "outwork") from the Anemas Prison to the Golden Horn. Consequently, Schneider transferred the identity of the Heraclian Wall on the short stretch of sea wall directly attached to it to its east, which displays a distinct architecture. The identity of the "Pteron" remains an unresolved question among modern scholars.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Another, short wall was added in later times, probably in the reign of Theophilos, stretching from the junction of the land and sea walls to the sea itself, and pierced by the so-called Wooden Gate (Ξυλίνη πύλη, "Xylinē pylē", or Ξυλόπορτα, "Xyloporta"). Both this wall and the gate were demolished in 1868.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The land walls run through the heart of modern Istanbul, with a belt of parkland flanking their course. They are pierced at intervals by modern roads leading westwards out of the city. Many sections were restored during the 1980s, with financial support from UNESCO, but the restoration program has been criticized for destroying historical evidence, focusing on superficial restoration, the use of inappropriate materials and poor quality of work. This became apparent in the 1999 earthquakes, when the restored sections collapsed while the original structure underneath remained intact. The threat posed by urban pollution, and the lack of a comprehensive restoration effort, prompted the World Monuments Fund to include them on its 2008 Watch List of the 100 Most Endangered Sites in the world.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The seaward walls (, "teichē paralia") enclosed the city on the sides of the Sea of Marmara (Propontis) and the gulf of the Golden Horn (). Although the original city of Byzantium certainly had sea walls, traces of which survive, the exact date for the construction of the medieval walls is a matter of debate. Traditionally, the seaward walls have been attributed by scholars to Constantine I, along with the construction of the main land wall. The first known reference to their construction comes in 439, when the urban prefect Cyrus of Panopolis (in sources often confused with the praetorian prefect Constantine) was ordered to repair the city walls and complete them on the seaward side. This activity is certainly not unconnected to the fact that in the same year, Carthage fell to the Vandals, an event which signaled the emergence of a naval threat in the Mediterranean. This two-phase construction remains the general consensus, but Cyril Mango doubts the existence of any seaward fortifications during Late Antiquity, as they are not specifically mentioned as extant by contemporary sources until much later, around the year 700.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The Sea Walls were architecturally similar to the Theodosian Walls, but of simpler construction. They were formed by a single wall, considerably lower than the land walls, with inner circuits in the locations of the harbours. Enemy access to the walls facing the Golden Horn was prevented by the presence of a heavy chain or boom, installed by Emperor Leo III (r. 717–741), supported by floating barrels and stretching across the mouth of the inlet. One end of this chain was fastened to the Tower of Eugenius, in the modern suburb of Sirkeci, and the other in Galata, to a large, square tower, the "Kastellion", the basement of which was later turned into the Yeraltı (underground) Mosque. At the same time, on the Marmara coast, the city's defence was helped by strong currents, which made an attack by a fleet almost impossible. According to Geoffrey of Villehardouin, it was for this reason that the Fourth Crusade did not attack the city from this side.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: During the early centuries of its existence, Constantinople faced few naval threats. Especially after the wars of Justinian, the Mediterranean had again become a "Roman lake". It was during the first siege of the city by the Avars and the Sasanid Persians that for the first time, a naval engagement was fought off the city itself. After the Arab conquests of Syria and Egypt, a new naval threat emerged. In response, the sea walls were renovated in the early 8th century under Tiberios III (r. 698–705) or Anastasios II (r. 713–715). Michael II (r. 820–829) initiated a wide-scale reconstruction, eventually completed by his successor Theophilos (r. 829–842), which increased their height. As these repairs coincided with the capture of Crete by the Saracens, no expense was spared: As Constantine Manasses wrote, "the gold coins of the realm were spent as freely as worthless pebbles". Theophilos' extensive work, essentially rebuilding the sea walls, is testified to by the numerous inscriptions found or otherwise recorded that bear his name, more than those of any other emperor. Despite future changes and restorations, these walls would essentially protect the city until the end of the empire.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: During the siege of the city by the Fourth Crusade, the sea walls nonetheless proved to be a weak point in the city's defences, as the Venetians managed to storm them. Following this experience, Michael VIII Palaiologos (r. 1259–1282) took particular care to heighten and strengthen the seaward walls immediately after the Byzantine recapture of the city in 1261, since a Latin attempt to recover the city was regarded as imminent. Furthermore, the installation of the Genoese at Galata across the Golden Horn, agreed upon in the Treaty of Nymphaeum, posed a further potential threat to the city. Time being short, as a Latin attempt to recover the city was expected, the sea walls were heightened by the addition of two-meter high wooden and hide-covered screens. Ten years later, facing the threat of an invasion by Charles d'Anjou, a second line of walls was built behind the original maritime walls, although no trace of them survives today.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The walls were again restored under Andronikos II Palaiologos (r. 1282–1328) and again under his successor Andronikos III Palaiologos (r. 1328–1341), when, on 12 February 1332, a major storm caused breaches in the wall and forced the seaward gates open. In 1351, when the empire was at war with the Genoese, John VI Kantakouzenos again repaired the walls, and even opened a moat in front of the wall facing the Golden Horn. Other repairs are recorded for 1434, again against the Genoese, and again in the years leading up to the final siege and fall of the city to the Ottomans, partly with funds provided by the Despot of Serbia, George Brankovic.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The wall facing towards the Golden Horn, where in later times most seaborne traffic was conducted, stretched for a total length of 5,600 metres from the cape of St. Demetrius to the Blachernae, where it adjoined the Land Walls. Although most of the wall was demolished in the 1870s, during the construction of the railway line, its course and the position of most gates and towers is known with accuracy. It was built further inland from the shore, and was about 10 metres tall. According to Cristoforo Buondelmonti it featured 14 gates and 110 towers, although 16 gates are known that are of Byzantine origin. The northern shore of the city was always its more cosmopolitan part: a major focal point of commerce, it also contained the quarters allocated to foreigners living in the imperial capital. Muslim traders had their own lodgings ("mitaton") there, including a mosque, while from the time of Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118) on, the emperors granted to the various Italian maritime republics extensive trading quarters which included their own wharfs ("skalai") beyond the sea walls.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The known gates of the Golden Horn wall may be traced in order from the Blachernae eastwards to the Seraglio Point, as follows:


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The first gate, very near the land walls, was the Koiliomene Gate (, "Koiliōmēnē (Kyliomēnē) Porta", "Rolled Gate"), in Turkish "Küçük Ayvansaray Kapısı". Shortly after stood the Gate of St. Anastasia (, "Pylē tēs hagias Anastasias"), located near the Atik Mustafa Pasha Mosque, hence in Turkish "Atik Mustafa Paşa Kapısı". In close proximity on the outer side of the walls lay the Church of St. Nicholas Kanabos, which in 1597–1601 served as the cathedral of the Patriarch of Constantinople.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Further down the coast was the gate known in Turkish as "Balat Kapı" ("Palace Gate"), preceded in close order by three large archways, which served either as gates to the shore or to a harbour that serviced the imperial palace of Blachernae. Two gates are known to have existed in the vicinity in Byzantine times: the Kynegos Gate (, "Pylē tou Kynēgou/tōn Kynēgōn", "Gate of the Hunter(s)"), whence the quarter behind it was named "Kynegion", and the Gate of St. John the Forerunner and Baptist (, "Porta tou hagiou Prodromou kai Baptistou"), though it is not clear whether the latter was distinct from the Kynegos Gate. The "Balat Kapı" has been variously identified as one of them, and as one of the three gates on the Golden Horn known as the Imperial Gate (, "Pylē Basilikē").


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Further south was the Gate of the Phanarion (, "Pylē tou Phanariou"), Turkish "Fener Kapısı", named after the local light-tower ("phanarion" in Greek), which also gave its name to the local suburb. The gate also marked the western entrance of the Petrion Fort (, "kastron tōn Petriōn"), formed by a double stretch of walls between the Gate of the Phanarion and the Petrion Gate (, "Pylē tou Petriou"), in Turkish "Petri Kapısı". According to Byzantine tradition, the area was named thus after Peter the Patrician, a leading minister of Justinian I (r. 527–565). A small gate of the western end of the fort's inner wall, near the Phanarion Gate, led to the city, and was called the Gate of Diplophanarion. It was at the Petrion Gate that the Venetians, under the personal leadership of Doge Enrico Dandolo, scaled the walls and entered the city in the 1204 sack. In the 1453 siege an Ottoman attack on the same place was repelled.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The next gate, "Yeni Ayakapı" ("New Gate of the Saint"), is not Byzantine, unless it replaces an earlier Byzantine entrance. It was constructed by the great Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan in 1582. Shortly after it lies the older "Ayakapı" ("Gate of the Saint"), known in Greek as the St. Theodosia Gate () after the great earby church of St. Theodosia (formerly identified with the Gül Mosque). The next gate is that of Eis Pegas (, "Pylē eis Pēgas"), known by Latin chroniclers as "Porta Puteae" or "Porta del Pozzo", modern "Cibali Kapısı". It was named so because it looked towards the quarter of Pegae (, "Pēgai", "springs") on the other shore of the Golden Horn. Next was the now-demolished Gate of the Platea (, "Porta tēs Plateas") follows, rendered as "Porta della Piazza" by Italian chroniclers, and called in Turkish "Unkapanı Kapısı" ("Gate of the Flour Depot"). It was named after the local quarter of "Plate[i]a" ("broad place", signifying the broad shoreline at this place). The next gate, "Ayazma Kapısı" ("Gate of the Holy Well"), is in all probability an Ottoman-era structure.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The next gate is the Gate of the Drungaries (, "Pylē tōn Droungariōn"), modern "Odunkapısı" ("Wood Gate"). Its Byzantine name derives from the high official known as the Drungary of the Watch. It marked the western end of the Venetian quarter. It is followed by the Gate the Forerunner, known as St. John de Cornibus by the Latins, named after a nearby chapel. In Turkish it is known as "Zindan Kapısı" ("Dungeon Gate"). The destroyed Gate of the Perama (, "Porta tou Peramatos") lay in the suburb of Perama ("Crossing"), from which the ferry to Pera (Galata) sailed. It marked the eastern limit of the Venetian quarter of the city, and the beginning of the Amalfitan quarter to its east. In Buondelmonti's map, it is labelled "Porta Piscaria", on account of the fishmarket that used to be held there, a name that has been preserved in its modern Turkish appellation, "Balıkpazarı Kapısı", "Gate of the Fish-market". This gate is also identified with the Gate of the Jews (, "Hebraïkē Porta"), "Porta Hebraica" in Latin sources, although the same name was apparently applied over time to other gates as well. In its vicinity was probably also the Gate of St. Mark, which is recorded in a single Venetian document of 1229. Its identity is unclear, as is the question whether the gate, conspicuously named in honour of the patron saint of Venice, was pre-existing or opened after the fall of the city to the Crusaders in 1204.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: To the east of the Perama Gate was the Hikanatissa Gate (, "Porta tēs Hikanatissēs"), a name perhaps derived from the imperial "tagma" of the "Hikanatoi". The gate marked the eastern end of the Amalfitan quarter of the city and the western edge of the Pisan quarter. Further east lay the Gate of the Neorion (, "Porta tou Neōriou"), recorded as the Horaia Gate (, "Pylē Horaia", "Beautiful Gate") in late Byzantine and Ottoman times. As its names testifies, it led to the leading to the "Neorion", the main harbour of ancient Byzantium and the oldest naval arsenal of the city. In the early Ottoman period, it was known in Turkish as the "Çıfıtkapı" ("Hebrew Gate"), but its modern name is "Bahçekapı" ("Garden Gate"). The eastern limit of the Pisan quarter was located a bit eastwards of the gate.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The 12th-century Genoese quarter of the city extended from there to the east, and in the documents conferring privileges on them one finds mention of two gates: the "Porta Bonu" ("Gate of Bonus", probably transcribed from Greek ), and the "Porta Veteris Rectoris" ("Gate of the old rector"). It is very likely that these two names refer to the same gate, probably named after an otherwise unknown rector Bonus, and located somewhere in the modern Sirkeci district. Finally, the last gate of the Golden Horn wall was the Gate of Eugenius (, "Porta tou Eugeniou"), leading to the "Prosphorion" harbour. In close proximity was the 4th-century Tower of Eugenius or "Kentenarion", where the great chain that closed the entrance to the Golden Horn was kept and suspended from. The gate was also called "Marmaroporta" (Μαρμαροπόρτα, "Marble Gate"), because it was covered in marble, and featured a statue of the Emperor Julian. It is usually identified with the Ottoman "Yalıköşkü Kapısı", and was destroyed in 1871.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The wall of the Propontis was built almost at the shoreline, with the exception of harbours and quays, and had a height of 12–15 metres, with thirteen gates, and 188 towers. and a total length of almost 8,460 metres, with further 1,080 metres comprising the inner wall of the Vlanga harbour. Several sections of the wall were damaged during the construction of the "Kennedy Caddesi" coastal road in 1956–57. The wall's proximity to the sea and the strong currents of the Propontis meant that eastern and southern shores of the peninsula were comparatively safe from attack, but conversely, the walls had to be protected against the sea itself: a breakwater of boulders was placed in front of their base, and marble shafts were used as bonds in the walls' base to enhance their structural integrity. From the cape at the edge of the ancient acropolis of the city (modern "Sarayburnu", Seraglio Point), south and west to the Marble Tower, the Propontis Wall and its gates went as follows:


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The first gate, now demolished, was the Eastern Gate (, "Heōa Pylē") or Gate of St. Barbara (, "Pylē tēs martyros Barbaras") after a nearby church, in Turkish "Top Kapısı" ("Gate of the Cannon"), from which Topkapı Palace takes its name. Unique among the seaward gates, it was, like the Golden Gate, flanked by two large towers of white marble, which in 1816 was used to construct the nearby Marble Kiosk of Sultan Mahmud II. Twice it served as the entry-point for an emperor's triumphal return: in 1126, when John II Komnenos returned from the recapture of his ancestral Kastamonu, and in 1168, when Manuel I Komnenos returned from his victorious campaign against Hungary.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Next was the gate known in Turkish as "Değirmen Kapı" ("Mill[stone] Gate"), whose Byzantine name is unknown. Close by and to its north stood the great Tower of Mangana, which was intended to hold the one end of the chain, planned (but probably never actually installed) by Manuel I Komnenos to close off the Bosphorus, the other end being at a tower erected on the island of the modern Maiden's Tower ("Kız Kulesi") off Chrysopolis (modern Üsküdar), known as "Damalis" (Δάμαλις) or "Arkla" () in Byzantine times. The next gate is now known as the "Demirkapı" ("Iron Gate"), and is an Ottoman-era structure. A Greek name is not known, and it is not known whether a gate stood there in Byzantine times. Behind these two gates extended the quarter of the "Mangana" (Μάγγανα, "Arsenal"), with its numerous monasteries, the most famous of which were those of St. George of Mangana, the Church of Christ Philanthropos, and of the "Theotokos Hodegetria", and the Palace of Mangana. Four small posterns, in two pairs of two, stand at the southern edge of the "Mangana" quarter, and probably serviced the numerous churches. The names, but not the identity, of two of them have been recorded, the Postern of St. Lazarus (, "pylis tou hagiou Lazarou"), and the Small Gate of the "Hodegetria" (, "mikra pylē tēs Hodēgētrias"), both named after the respective monasteries located near them. It is also probable that one of them is to be identified with the Postern of Michael the Protovestiarios (, "parapylis tou Michaēl tou prōtovestiariou").


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Further south, at the point where the shore turns westwards, are two further gates, the "Balıkhane Kapısı" ("Gate of the Fish-House") and "Ahırkapısı" ("Stable Gate"). Their names derive from the buildings inside the Topkapı Palace they led to. Their Byzantine names are unknown. The next gate, on the southeastern corner of the city, was the gate of the imperial Boukoleon Palace, known in Byzantine times as the Gate of the Lion (Gk. Πόρτα Λέοντος, "Porta Leontos", in Latin "Porta Leonis") after the marble lions that flanked its entrance, as well as Gate of the Bear (, "porta tēs arkoudas") after depictions of that animal at the quay. In Turkish it is known as "Çatladıkapı" ("Broken Gate").


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: To the west of the Bucoleon Palace lies the Church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, and the first of the harbours of the city's southern shore, that of the Sophiae, named after the wife of Emperor Justin II (r. 565–578) and known originally as the Port of Julian. A small postern is situated in front of the church, while the first larger gate, the Gate of the Sophiae (, "Porta tōn Sophiōn") or Iron Gate (, "Porta Sidēra"), opened to the harbour. In Turkish, it is known as "Kadırgalimanı Kapısı", "Gate of the Harbour of the Galleys". Next was the Gate of Kontoskalion (), modern "Kumkapısı" ("Sand Gate"), which opened to the late Byzantine harbour of the same name, intended to replace the long silted-up Harbour of the Sophiae.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The next harbour to the west is the large Harbour of Eleutherius or Theodosius, in the area known as "Vlanga". The harbours are now silted up and known as the "Langa Bostan" park. Immediately before it to the east stands the gate known in Turkish as the "Yenikapı" ("New Gate"). A Latin inscription commemorates its repair after the 447 earthquake It is usually identified with the Jewish Gate of late Byzantine times. Immediately to the west after the harbour lies the next gate, "Davutpaşa Kapısı" ("Gate of Davut Pasha"), usually identified with the Gate of Saint Aemilianus (, "Porta tou hagiou Aimilianou"), which is known to have stood at the junction of the sea wall with the city's original Constantinian Wall. That view is disputed by Janin, as the junction of the walls occurred considerably to the west from the modern gate's location.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Further to the west, where the shoreline turns sharply south, stood the Gate of Psamathia (, "Porta tou Psamatha/Psamatheos"), modern "Samatya Kapısı", leading to the suburb of the same name. Further south and west lies the gate known today as "Narlıkapı" ("Pomegranate Gate"). Its Byzantine name is unknown, but is prominent on account of its proximity to the famed Monastery of Stoudios.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: During the whole existence of the Byzantine Empire, the garrison of the city was quite small: the imperial guards and the small city watch (the "pedatoura" or "kerketon") under the urban prefect were the only permanent armed force available. Any threat to the city would have to be dealt with by the field armies in the provinces, before it could approach the city itself. In times of need, such as the earthquake of 447 or the raids by the Avars in the early 7th century, the general population, organized in the guilds and the hippodrome factions, would be conscripted and armed, or additional troops would be brought in from the provincial armies.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: In the early centuries, the imperial guard consisted of the units of the "Excubitores" and "Scholae Palatinae", which by the late 7th century had declined to parade-ground troops. At about that time Justinian II established the first new guards units to protect the imperial palace precinct, while in the 8th century the emperors, faced with successive revolts by the thematic armies and pursuing deeply unpopular iconoclastic policies, established the imperial "tagmata" as an elite force loyal to them. As the "tagmata" were often used to form the core of imperial expeditionary armies, they were not always present in or near the city. Only two of them, the "Noumeroi" and the "Teicheiōtai", the palace guard units established by Justinian II, remained permanently stationed in Constantinople, garrisoned around the palace district or in various locations, such as disused churches, in the capital. The units present in the city at any one time were thus never very numerous, numbering a few thousands at best, but they were complemented by several detachments stationed around the capital, in Thrace and Bithynia.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The small size of the city's garrison was due to the uneasiness of emperors and populace alike towards a permanent large military force, both for fear of a military uprising and because of the considerable financial burden its maintenance would entail. Furthermore, a large force was largely unnecessary, because of the inherent security provided by the city walls themselves. As historian John Haldon notes, "providing the gates were secured and the defenses provided with a skeleton force, the City was safe against even very large forces in the pre-gunpowder period."


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Several fortifications were built at various periods in the vicinity of Constantinople, forming part of its defensive system. The first and greatest of these is the 56 km long Anastasian Wall (Gk. , "teichos Anastasiakon") or Long Wall (, "makron teichos", or , "megalē Souda"), built in the mid-5th century as an outer defence to Constantinople, some 65 km westwards of the city. It was 3.30 m thick and over 5 m high, but its effectiveness was apparently limited, and it was abandoned at some time in the 7th century for want of resources to maintain and men to garrison it. For centuries thereafter, its materials were used in local buildings, but several parts, especially in the remoter central and northern sections, are still extant.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: In addition, between the Anastasian Wall and the city itself, there were several small towns and fortresses like Selymbria, Region or the great suburb of "Hebdomon" ("Seventh", modern Bakırköy, so named from its distance of seven Roman miles from the Milion, the city's mile-marker), the site of major military encampments. Beyond the Long Walls, the towns of Bizye and Arcadiopolis covered the northern approaches. These localities were strategically situated along the main routes to the city, and formed the outer defenses of Constantinople throughout its history, serving to muster forces, confront enemy invasions or at least buy time for the capital's defenses to be brought in order. It is notable that during the final Ottoman siege, several of them, such as Selymbria, surrendered only after the fall of Constantinople itself. In Asia Minor, their role was mirrored by the cities of Nicaea and Nicomedia, and the large field camp at Malagina.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: Galata, then the suburb of Sykai, was an integral part of the city by the early 5th century: the "Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae" of ca. 425 names it as the city's 13th region. It was probably fortified with walls in the 5th century, and under Justinian I it was granted the status of a city. The settlement declined and disappeared after the 7th century, leaving only the great tower (the "kastellion tou Galatou") in modern Karaköy, that guarded the chain extending across the mouth of the Golden Horn. After the sack of the city in 1204, Galata became a Venetian quarter, and later a Genoese extraterritorial colony, effectively outside Byzantine control. Despite Byzantine opposition, the Genoese managed to surround their quarter with a moat, and by joining their castle-like houses with walls they created the first wall around the colony. The Galata Tower, then called "Christea Turris" ("Tower of Christ"), and another stretch of walls to its north were built in 1349. Further expansions followed in 1387, 1397 and 1404, enclosing an area larger than that originally allocated to them, stretching from the modern district of Azapkapı north to Şişhane, from there to Tophane and thence to Karaköy. After the Ottoman conquest, the walls were maintained until the 1870s, when most were demolished to facilitate the expansion of the city. Today only the Galata Tower, visible from most of historical Constantinople, remains intact, along with several smaller fragments.


title: Walls of Constantinople

text: The twin forts of Anadoluhisarı and Rumelihisarı lie to the north of Istanbul, at the narrowest point of the Bosphorus. They were built by the Ottomans to control this strategically vital waterway in preparation for their final assault on Constantinople. "Anadoluhisarı" (Turkish for "Fortress of Anatolia"), also called "Akçehisar" and "Güzelcehisar" ("beautiful fortress") in earlier times, was constructed by Sultan Bayezid I in 1394, and initially consisted of just a 25 m high, roughly pentagonal watchtower surrounded by a wall. The much larger and more elaborate "Rumelihisarı" ("Fortress of Rumeli") was built by Sultan Mehmed II in just over four months in 1452. It consists of three large and one small towers, connected by a wall reinforced with 13 small watchtowers. With cannons mounted on its main towers, the fort gave the Ottomans complete control of the passage of ships through Bosphorus, a role evoked clearly in its original name, "Boğazkesen" ("cutter of the strait"). After the conquest of Constantinople, it served as a customs checkpoint and a prison, notably for the embassies of states that were at war with the Empire. After suffering extensive damage in the 1509 earthquake, it was repaired, and was used continuously until the late 19th century.


title: Space force

text: A space force is a military branch of a nation's armed forces that conducts military operations in outer space and space warfare. The world's first space force was the Russian Space Forces, established in 1992 as an independent military service. However, it lost its independence twice, first being absorbed into the Strategic Rocket Forces from 1997 to 2001 and again in 2015, when it was merged with the Russian Air Force to form the Russian Aerospace Forces, where it now exists as a sub-branch. the world's only independent space forces are the United States Space Force and China's People's Liberation Army Strategic Support Force, which also is China's cyber force.


title: Space force

text: Countries with smaller or developing space forces may combine their air and space forces under a single military branch, such as the Russian Aerospace Forces, French Air and Space Force, or Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force, or put them in an independent defense agency, such as the Indian Defence Space Agency. Countries with nascent military space capabilities usually organize them within their air forces.


title: Space force

text: The first artificial object to cross the Kármán line, the boundary between air and space, was MW 18014, an A-4 rocket launched by the German "Heer" on 20 June 1944 from the Peenemünde Army Research Center. The A4, more commonly known as the V-2, was the world's first ballistic missile, used by the "Wehrmacht" to launch long-range attacks on the Allied Forces on the Western Front during the Second World War. The designer of the A4, Wernher von Braun, had aspirations to use them as space launch vehicles. In both the United States and the Soviet Union, military space development began immediately after the Second World War concluded, with Wernher von Braun defecting to the Allies and both superpowers gathering V-2 rockets, research materials, and German scientists to jumpstart their own ballistic missile and space programs.


title: Space force

text: In the United States, there was a fierce interservice rivalry between the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army over which service would gain responsibility for the military space program, with the Air Force, which had started developing its space program while it was the Army Air Forces in 1945, seeing space operations as an extension of their strategic airpower mission, while the Army argued that ballistic missiles were an extension of artillery. The Navy also developed rockets as well, but primarily for Naval Research Laboratory projects, rather than seeking to actively develop an operational space capability. Ultimately, the Air Force's space rivals in the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, Naval Research Laboratory, and Advanced Research Projects Agency were absorbed by NASA when it was created in 1958, leaving it as the only major military space organization within the U.S. Department of Defense. In 1954, General Bernard Schriever established the Western Development Division within Air Research and Development Command, becoming the U.S. military's first space organization, which continues to exist in the U.S. Space Force as the Space Systems Command, its research and development center.


title: Space force

text: During the 1960s and 1970s, Air Force space forces were organized within Aerospace Defense Command for missile defense and space surveillance forces, Strategic Air Command for weather reconnaissance satellites, and Air Force Systems Command for satellite communications, space launch, and space development systems. In 1982, U.S. Air Force space forces were centralized in Air Force Space Command, the first direct predecessor to the U.S. Space Force. U.S. space forces were first employed in the Vietnam War, and continued to provide satellite communications, weather, and navigation support during the 1982 Falklands War, 1983 United States invasion of Grenada, 1986 United States bombing of Libya, and 1989 United States invasion of Panama. The first major employment of space forces culminated in the Gulf War, where they proved so critical to the U.S.-led coalition, that it is sometimes referred to as the first space war. The first discussions of creating a military space service in the United States occurred in 1958, with the idea being floated by President Reagan as well in 1982. The 2001 Space Commission argued for the creation of a Space Corps between 2007 and 2011 and a bipartisan proposal in the U.S. Congress would have created a Space Corps in 2017. On 20 December 2019, the United States Space Force Act, part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020, was signed, creating an independent space service by renaming and reorganizing Air Force Space Command into the United States Space Force.


title: Space force

text: In the Soviet Union, the early space program was led by the OKB-1 design bureau, led by Sergei Korolev. Unlike in the United States, where the U.S. Air Force held preeminence in missile and space development, the Soviet Ground Forces, and specifically the Artillery of the Reserve of the Supreme High Command (RVGK), was responsible for missile and military space programs, with the RVGK responsible for the launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite on 4 October 1957. In 1960, Soviet military space forces were reorganized into the 3rd Department of the Main Missile Directorate of the Ministry of Defence, before in 1964 becoming a part of the new Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces Central Directorate of Space Assets. The Strategic Rocket Forces Central Directorate of Space Assets would be renamed the Main Directorate of Space Assets in 1970, being transferred to directly report to the Soviet Ministry of Defense in 1982, and in 1986 became the Chief Directorate of Space Assets. Established in 1967, the Anti-Ballistic Missile and Anti-Space Defense Forces of the Soviet Air Defense Forces were responsible for space surveillance and defense operations.