# Talk:Walls of Constantinople

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The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

Map of Constantinople (1422) by Florentine cartographer Cristoforo Buondelmonte.jpg
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 00:42, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

This article uses the date 6 November 447 for the earthquake that severely damaged the Theodosian walls. As the article for the earthquake makes clear, that is only one of the dates that have been proposed, with 26 January, 8 November and 8 December all being proposed (I've since found sources that use 4 November as well). The 26 January date comes from Malalas, and is supported by Marcellinus's description of the event being in "early 447". The 6 November date comes from the Chronicon Paschale. All this is taken from Guidoboni et al. 1994, accessible here (you'll need to click on "Comm." on that page to bring this up). Nicholas Ambraseys regards the 26 January earthquake as a foreshock to the main event on 6 November,[1] so there is no agreement amongst seismologists any more than there is between historians. Mikenorton (talk) 12:05, 3 November 2021 (UTC)


### Walls of Constantinople
I am researching the Fall of Constantinople and decided to utilize Raymond Janin's book, however, this page's references are a little off, such as the first reference to the founding of Byzantion and Byzas, which states that it was found between pages 10 and 12, however upon finding the book on the Internet Archive, I found that same information between pages 16 and 17. 2A00:23C6:1020:9001:7821:E64:DE7C:2CE0 (talk) 18:30, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Remsense. Sorry for the overly bold edits! I misinterpreted this section of the the body: "Ottoman artillery were unable to breach the wall for a period of almost two months." To me this implied that the walls *were* breached after two months, and I hadn't read its source yet. So I thought I was fixing a contradiction between the lead and body. I found an older source which confirmed my biases. It also didn't help that Fall of Constantinople directly contradicts this article, saying "these fortifications were overcome with the use of gunpowder" in the lead, with an apparently reliable(?) source. Apfelmaische (talk) 21:50, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

From Kaldellis (2023):
Now that the City was entirely cut off and surrounded, he concentrated his assault on the dip in the walls at the Romanos gate.[...]In the end, it was not cannons that sealed the City’s fate but a frontal assault and the vicissitudes of battle. On the morning of 29 May, after a night of intense religious preparation on the part of his army, Mehmed ordered a full-on attack against the weakest point in the walls, where the moat had been filled in. For reasons that are unclear, Konstantinos and Giustiniani had chosen to defend the outer wall, in front of the moat, which was originally some 9 meters tall, and not the inner wall, which was between 15 and 20 meters tall. They did so possibly in order to carry out the many sorties that had disrupted Mehmed’s operations during the past two months. On that day, the increasingly exhausted defenders repelled the first wave of irregulars, then the armies of Anatolia, but during the third-wave attack by the professional janissaries Giustiniani was wounded and retreated into the City, through a gate in the inner wall. Fearing that they were being abandoned by their commanders, the defenders panicked and fled.
(That Romanos gate dip is the natural result of building along the contours of the local geography, fwiw.)
Also! Kaldellis's next book is going to be all about the siege, IIRC. Remsense 🌈 论 21:59, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
Thank you! So, I'd like to reword the section I got confused on, for clarity. Also, somebody needs to tackle the lead of Fall of Constantinople because now I'm terrified to do it. Apfelmaische (talk) 22:05, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
What needs to be changed, do you think? I think it's summarized pretty well. Remsense 🌈 论 22:06, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
In this article? I've submitted my edit. As for Fall of Constantinople it says "these fortifications were overcome with the use of gunpowder" and "cannons ... created gaps in the Theodosian walls" which creates the impression that cannons were instrumental in the siege, but we've established that's not the case. Apfelmaische (talk) 22:13, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
No, not quite. The walls were weakened considerably, which exacerbated the task of defense generally, it's just the city didn't fall as a direct result of a hole being blown through the walls. Remsense 🌈 论 22:16, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
I think my problem is that "overcome with the use of gunpowder" is too strong a claim. I've made an edit. Infantry were the star of the show. Apfelmaische (talk) 22:36, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
I think it's pretty much right, given it rather deliberately avoids the notion that the walls were knocked down. Unno. Remsense 🌈 论 22:38, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
Consider a reader who comes to the article already believing cannons were the cause of the Ottoman victory, as I did. We don't want to confirm their bias with ambiguity, I think we want to shake them out of that belief. Apfelmaische (talk) 22:41, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
I mean, the Ottoman cannons are the cause for victory, and what would be acutely misleading imo is to imply, even by omission, that they weren't required to take the city—that they weren't the difference maker in 1453 as compared to previous sieges. Remsense 🌈 论 22:52, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
Agreed. I'm definitely not advocating for that. I'm satisfied with the wording I left in that article's lead. This isn't a black-or-white issue: both the infantry and artillery played crucial parts in the battle. Huh, actually, pretty much every battle. Apfelmaische (talk) 23:00, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

Why the map of Constantinople is presented twice (at the infobox and as a separate figure)? Should we not remove one of them? A.Cython (talk) 03:35, 12 November 2025 (UTC)