Constantinople was the capital city of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, the Latin and the Ottoman Empire. It was founded in AD 330, at ancient Byzantium as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Constantine the Great, after whom it was named. In the 12th century, the city was the largest and wealthiest European city. Eventually the empire of Christian Eastern Orthodoxy in the east was reduced to just the capital and its environs, falling to the Ottomans in the historic battle of 1453.
