Historic Areas of Istanbul
Hagia Sophia, Topkapı Palace, the Süleymaniye and the city walls. UNESCO listing (opens the UNESCO site) ↗︎
History
The story of Türkiye
Anatolia has one of the longest histories on earth. At Göbekli Tepe, stone circles were raised more than eleven thousand years ago. The Hittites ruled from the central plateau, Troy guarded the Dardanelles, and the Aegean coast was lined with Greek cities, among them Ephesus, Miletus and Halicarnassus, today's Bodrum.
In AD 330 Constantine made Byzantium his capital, Constantinople, and in 537 Justinian completed Hagia Sophia. In 1453 the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II took the city, and under Süleyman the Magnificent, in the sixteenth century, the empire reached from Hungary to the Gulf. The Topkapı Palace and the Dolmabahçe Palace on the Bosphorus show its splendour. The Republic of Türkiye was founded in 1923.
A short timeline
- Göbekli Tepec. 9600 BC
Among the oldest monumental buildings known.
- Hittites and Troy2nd millennium BC
Hattusa and the city of Homer's Iliad.
- The Greek and Roman coast8th century BC onwards
Ephesus, Pergamon and Halicarnassus.
- Byzantium330 to 1453
Constantinople and Hagia Sophia.
- The Ottomans1453 to 1922
Istanbul, Topkapı and Süleyman the Magnificent.
- The Republic1923 to today
Modern Türkiye.
