HELLAvatrip 2022 – εις την Πόλιν – Chapter 7 – Byzantium, Constantinople, İstanbul

After a relatively (a bit more than 6h) short ride from, Sofia, we ended up on the outskirts of Istanbul, at Halkalı station. After we bought tickets back to Bulgaria and struggled to get some cash at ATMs (the closest one wwere quite expensive for international tourists, as you would expect), we bought our Istanbulkarts and went to the city centre on a S-train called Marmaray.

And what a city it is! The largest in Europe, with around 16 milion (!) residents (90% increase since 2000). Although nowaways it is mostly inhabited by Turks and Kurds, it is historically an international city with a large Greek population (as the Byzantine Empire was speaking Greek as lingua franca) and a center of Greek culture and Eastern Christianity.

The peninsula was settled as far back as the 6th millennium BCE, but we all known that the interesting part starts around 660 BCE, when Greek settlers from Megara established Byzantium on the European side of the Bosporus. Byzantium was part of the Athenian League and was independent, it was however also later transformed into a new, Christian city named Nova Roma (that became the capital of the Roman Empire on 11 May 330 AD), by the Constantine the Great.

The city was captured by Mehmed II on 29 May 1453. Mehmed declared himself as the new Kayser-i Rûm (the Ottoman Turkish equivalent of the Caesar of Rome) and the Ottoman state was reorganized into an empire. However, the new rulers welcomed everyone: foreigners, runaways, European immigrants etc, showing extraordinary openness and willingness to incorporate outsiders that came to define Ottoman political culture.

Unfortunately, in the XIX century the Ottoman and later the Turkish republican government conducted plenty of genocides with the goal of turkification. For this case the Greek genocide (1913–1923) and Istanbul pogrom (6–7 September 1955) plus the immigration from Anatolia to the city completely changed the ethnic structure of the city.

But anyway, please enjoy the photos of the city. You can also visit the Transport in Istanbul album.