Fall of Constantinople

The sack of Constantinople occurred in April 1204 and marked the culmination of the Fourth Crusade. Crusader armies captured, looted, and destroyed parts of Constantinople, then the capital of the Byzantine Empire. After the capture of the city, the Latin Empire (known to the Byzantines as the Frankokratia or the Latin Occupation) was established and Baldwin of Flanders was crowned Emperor Baldwin I of Constantinople in the Hagia Sophia. After the city's sacking, most of the Byzantine Empire's territories were divided up among the Crusaders. Byzantine aristocrats also established a number of small independent splinter states, one of them being the Empire of Nicaea, which would eventually recapture Constantinople in 1261 and proclaim the reinstatement of the Empire. However, the restored Empire never managed to reclaim its former territorial or economic strength, and eventually fell to the rising Ottoman Empire in the 1453 Siege of Constantinople. The sack of Constantinople is a major turning point in medieval history. The Crusaders' decision to attack the world's largest Christian city was unprecedented and immediately controversial. Reports of Crusader looting and brutality scandalised and horrified the Orthodox world; relations between the Catholic and Orthodox churches were catastrophically wounded for many centuries afterwards, and would not be substantially repaired until modern times. The Byzantine Empire was left much poorer, smaller, and ultimately less able to defend itself against the Seljuk and Ottoman conquests that followed; the actions of the Crusaders thus directly accelerated the collapse of Christendom in the east, and in the long run helped facilitate the later Ottoman Conquests of Southeastern Europe.

The siege of Constantinople in 1203 was a Crusader siege of the capital of the Byzantine Empire, in support of the deposed emperor Isaac II Angelos and his son Alexios IV Angelos. It marked the main outcome of the Fourth Crusade.

The first full-scale Ottoman siege of Constantinople took place in 1422 as a result of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II's attempts to interfere in the succession of Ottoman Sultans, after the death of Mehmed I in 1421. This policy of the Byzantines was often used successfully in weakening their neighbours. When Murad II emerged as the winning successor to his father, he marched into Byzantine territory. The Turks had acquired their own cannon for the first time by the siege of 1422, "falcons", which were short but wide cannons. The two sides were evenly matched technologically, and the Turks had to build barricades "in order to receive ... the stones of the bombards".

The siege of Constantinople in 1260 was the failed attempt by the Nicene Empire, the major remnant of the fractured Byzantine Empire, to retake Constantinople from the Latin Empire and re-establish the City as the political, cultural and spiritual capital of a revived Byzantine Empire.

The Istanbul Railway Museum (Turkish: İstanbul Demiryolu Müzesi) is a railway museum situated within the historic İstanbul Sirkeci Terminal at Sirkeci neighborhood of Fatih district in Istanbul, Turkey. Opened on September 23, 2005, the museum is owned and operated by the Turkish State Railways (TCDD).In the museum, which is housed in the 1888-built and 1890-opened railway terminal, around 300 historical items are on display. The exhibits of the museum covering an area of 145 m2 (1,560 sq ft) include parts of the trains and the railway stations, photographs, and related documents. A few of these are furniture and silver services used in dining cars, station office equipment, the driver cab of an electric suburban train, manufacturer plates of some historic TCDD rolling stock, warning plates, and a station's clock and bell.It was reported that 52,774 people, among them 31,153 foreign tourists, visited the museum in 2006.

Sirkeci railway station (Turkish: Sirkeci garı), listed on maps as Istanbul railway station (Turkish: İstanbul garı), is a railway terminal in Istanbul, Turkey. The terminal is located in Sirkeci, on the tip of Istanbul's historic peninsula, right next to the Golden Horn and just northwest of Gülhane Park and the Topkapı Palace. Sirkeci Terminal on the European side of the Bosporus strait, along with Haydarpaşa Terminal on the Asian side, are Istanbul's two intercity and commuter railway terminals. Built in 1890 by the Oriental Railway as the eastern terminus of the world-famous Orient Express that once operated between Paris and Istanbul in the period between 1883 and 2009, Sirkeci Terminal has become a symbol of the city. As of 19 March 2013, service to the station was indefinitely suspended due to the rehabilitation of the existing line between Kazlıçeşme and Halkalı for the new Marmaray commuter rail line. On 29 October 2013, a new underground station was opened to the public and is serviced by Marmaray trains travelling across the Bosphorus. Sirkeci Terminal has a total of 4 platforms (3 above, 1 underground) with 7 tracks (5 above, 2 underground). Formerly, commuter trains to Halkalı would depart from tracks 2, 3 and 4; while regional trains to Kapıkule, Edirne and Uzunköprü, along with international trains to Bucharest, Sofia and Belgrade would depart from tracks 1 and 5.

The Neorion Harbour (Greek: Λιμὴν τοῦ Νεωρίου or Λιμὴν τῶν Νεωρίων) was a harbour in the city of Constantinople, active from the foundation of the city in the 4th century until the late Ottoman period. It was the first port to be built in Constantinople after its re-foundation by Constantine the Great, and the second in the area after the Prosphorion, which was the port of ancient Byzantium.

Sirkeci (pronounced [ˈsiɾkedʒi]) is a neighborhood in the Eminönü quarter of the Fatih district in Istanbul, Turkey. The neighborhood borders to the north the mouth of the Golden Horn, to the west the neighborhood of Bahçekapı, to the east the Topkapı Palace area, and to the south the Cağaloğlu neighborhood. It hosts the Sirkeci railway station, the easternmost terminus of the Orient Express, a historic long-distance passenger train service in Europe that operated between Paris and Istanbul in the period between 1883 and 2009.The neighborhood consists mostly of commercial and tourist-oriented buildings. A combination of small shops, hans (larger workshops) and offices intermingle with boutique hotels, traditional Turkish restaurants, Turkish and foreign-language bookstores, and tourist offices. In the Byzantine period, the area was known as Prosphorion (Ancient Greek: Προσφόριον).

The Tomb of Abdul Hamid I (Turkish: I. Abdülhamid Türbesi) is the final resting place of Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid I located at Fatih in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Prosphorion Harbour (Greek: Προσφόριον) was a harbour in the city of Constantinople, active from the time when the city was still the Greek colony of Byzantium (657 BC – 324 AD), until the eve of the first millennium. Gradually enlarged, it was the first port to be built in the area of the future Constantinople.

The Istanbul 4th Vakıf Han is a historical large office building located in the Sirkeci neighbourhood of the Eminönü quarter within the Fatih district of Istanbul, Turkey. It is owned by the Foundations Administration (Turkish: Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğü). Currently, it is used as a five star hotel of the World Park Hotel chain named Legacy Ottoman.

The Istanbul Grand Post Office (Turkish: Büyük Postane), or Istanbul Main Post Office, is an office building for postal services located in the Sirkeci neighborhood of the Eminönü quarter within the Fatih district of Istanbul, Turkey. It was designed by architect Vedat Tek in First Turkish National architectural style and was constructed between 1905 and 1909. The four-story building houses a post office, the Sirkeci Post Office (Turkish: Sirkeci PTT Merkezi), office space for regional administration and also since 2000 the Istanbul Postal Museum (Turkish: PTT İstanbul Müzesi). It is Turkey's largest post office building.