The last emperor, who shared a name with the city's founder and died fighting at the walls
Constantine XI Palaiologos; his body was never identified.
History · Medieval
The Fall of Constantinople
29 May 1453
The end of the Byzantine Empire
After a fifty-three-day siege, the twenty-one-year-old Ottoman sultan Mehmed II took the Byzantine capital, ending an empire that traced itself unbroken to Rome. The last emperor died in the fighting, the great church became a mosque, and the city became the Ottoman capital. Historians often use the date to mark the end of the Middle Ages.
How to spot them
- ▸Clue patterns: a fifty-three-day siege in 1453, a chain across a harbour, ships dragged overland, a 21-year-old sultan
- ▸The last emperor shared his name with the city's founder
- ▸A Hungarian gun-founder built the monster cannon after the defenders could not afford him
- ▸The triple land walls had held for a thousand years
What happened
A 21-year-old sultan who took an epithet meaning 'the Conqueror'
Mehmed II, Fatih Sultan Mehmet.
A monster bombard cast by a Hungarian who had first offered his services to the defenders
Orban (Urban); the gun could fire a stone ball of some 500 kg but took hours to reload.
A chain slung across the harbour, bypassed by hauling ships overland on greased rollers
The boom across the Golden Horn; the ships were dragged behind Galata.
Triple land walls that had held for a thousand years, and a small gate reportedly left unbarred
The Theodosian Walls; the Kerkoporta postern.
A Genoese commander wounded and carried off, after which the defence collapsed
Giovanni Giustiniani Longo.
A sixth-century church turned into a mosque on the day the city fell
Hagia Sophia; a museum from 1935, and a mosque again since 2020.
Quick-fire facts
- •The city fell on 29 May 1453 after a siege that began on 6 April — fifty-three days.
- •The Ottoman sultan was Mehmed II, later called Mehmed the Conqueror; he was twenty-one.
- •Constantine XI Palaiologos was the last Byzantine emperor and died in the fighting.
- •The Hungarian founder Orban cast the giant cannon used against the Theodosian Walls after the Byzantines could not pay him.
- •Ottoman ships were hauled overland on greased rollers into the Golden Horn to bypass the defensive chain.
- •The Genoese condottiere Giovanni Giustiniani led the defence and was mortally wounded near the end.
- •Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque; Constantinople became the Ottoman capital, later renamed Istanbul (officially in 1930).
- •The Byzantine Empire had lasted, by its own reckoning, since Constantine I refounded the city in 330.
- •The fall is one conventional marker for the end of the Middle Ages, and is linked to the Greek scholarly exodus that fed the Italian Renaissance.
- •The city had previously been sacked in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade, from which it never fully recovered.
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Sources
- Steven Runciman — The Fall of Constantinople 1453
- Roger Crowley — 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Fall of Constantinople