Sirkeci railway station

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 (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 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 Fall of Constantinople was the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Empire. The city fell on 29 May 1453, the culmination of a 53-day siege which had begun on 6 April 1453. The attacking Ottoman Army, which significantly outnumbered Constantinople's defenders, was commanded by the 21-year-old Sultan Mehmed II (later called "Mehmed the Conqueror"), while the Byzantine army was led by Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos. After conquering the city, Mehmed II made Constantinople the new Ottoman capital, replacing Adrianople. The conquest of Constantinople and the fall of the Byzantine Empire was a watershed of the Late Middle Ages and is considered the end of the medieval period. The city's fall also stood as a turning point in military history. Since ancient times, cities and castles had depended upon ramparts and walls to repel invaders. The Walls of Constantinople, especially the Theodosian Walls, were some of the most advanced defensive systems in the world. These fortifications were overcome with the use of gunpowder, specifically in the form of large cannons and bombards, heralding a change in siege warfare.

Istanbul Museum of the History of Science and Technology in Islam (Turkish: İstanbul İslam Bilim ve Teknoloji Tarihi Müzesi) is located in the former Imperial Stables Building in Gülhane Park. The museum was opened on 25 May 2008 and displays replicas of 9th and 16th century scientific instruments of Muslim scholars. The models were all made at the Institute for the History of Arab-Islamic Sciences of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt from descriptions and drawings in contemporary texts - very few original items are present. Many items are "completely imagined", while others are based on drawings of similar-looking devices in manuscripts, but it is unknown if these were ever built, or intended to be built.

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.

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.

Cağaloğlu is a quarter located in the Fatih district of Istanbul, Turkey. Much of the publishing industry in Istanbul is located in Cağaloğlu. It is also famous for its ancient hamam, or Turkish bath, known as the Cağaloğlu Hamam.

The Eurovision Song Contest 2004 was the 49th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Istanbul, Turkey, following the country's victory at the 2003 contest with the song "Everyway That I Can" by Sertab Erener. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), the contest was held at the Abdi İpekçi Arena, and, for the first time, consisted of a semi-final on 12 May, and a final on 15 May 2004. The two live shows were presented by Turkish actors Korhan Abay and Meltem Cumbul. It was the first time that Turkey had hosted the contest, 29 years after the country made its debut, and was also the first time since the 1998 contest in Birmingham that it was not hosted in the host country's capital city. This was the only edition of the contest that was hosted in a city other than the host nation's capital in the 21st century, until Germany picked Düsseldorf as the host city for the 2011 edition. Thirty-six countries participated in the contest, beating the record of twenty-six in the previous edition. Albania, Andorra, Belarus and Serbia and Montenegro took part for the first time this year. The old relegation system was replaced with a semi-final format. This was done in order to accommodate the increasing number of countries who wished to participate. The new format allowed all countries to participate every year, rather than being forced to sit out per the relegation rules, which had been the standard since 1994. Because of this, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Macedonia, Monaco and Switzerland all returned to the contest, Monaco not having competed since 1979. The winner was Ukraine with the song "Wild Dances", performed by Ruslana who wrote it with her husband Oleksandr Ksenofontov. This was Ukraine's first victory in the contest, only one year after the country made its debut in 2003. Serbia and Montenegro, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus rounded out the top five. Due the expansion of the contest, this year was the first time in which a non-winning entry scored over 200 points. Prior to this contest, only the winning entries in 1994 and 1997 had passed this mark. In this contest, the top 3 songs all got over 200 points. An official CD was released and, for the first time, the entire contest was released on DVD which included the semi-final and the grand final.