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The City-Walls of Istanbul

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2015

Alfons Maria Schneider
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Extract

‘Constantinople is a precious key, worth a whole kingdom; its possessor will be master of the world’. Napoleon’s prophecy might equally have been made by Constantine himself, the founder of the city. For the chequered history of the Byzantine Empire shows that more than once the mere possession of Constantinople stood between it and destruction. Yet the city’s impregnability did not depend solely on its Roman heritage and its peerless geographical and political position, but owed as great a debt to the genius of the younger Theodosius in constructing an enceinte which, apart from St. Sophia, is today the most impressive monument of the vanished Byzantine power.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 11 , Issue 44 , December 1937 , pp. 461 - 468
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1937

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References

1 Byzantine Constantinople : the walls of the City and adjoining historical sites. London, 1899.Google Scholar

2 Lietzmann, H., Konstantinupel, Die Landmw von. Vurbhht ü ber die Aufnahme im Herbst 1928. (Abhandlungen der Akademie Berlin, 1929)Google Scholar. Schneider-Meyer, Die Landmauer von Konstantinopel. Zweiter Vorbericht. (Sitzungsberichte der Akademie Berlin, 1933).

3 Plan of the walls, with the names of the gates, in Schneider, A.M., Byzanz (Istanbuler Forschungen 8, Berlin, 1936).Google Scholar Topographical map.