With its strategic location on the Bosphorus peninsula between the Balkans and Bosphorus and the Mediterranean, Istanbul has been associated with major political, religious and artistic events for ...

On 6 April 1453, the Siege of Constantinople began under the command of Mehmed II, an Ottoman sultan who was just 21 years old but determined to see through his father’s dream of capturing the ...

John Julius Norwich tells the dramatic story of the fall of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire, followed by the rise of the Ottoman Turks in the 15th Century. Using monuments in Istanbul to ...