4090 AM · 330 CE · world history
The Founding of Constantinople
Constantine moves the capital to the Bosphorus, and a new Rome rises on the site of Byzantium.
For his new capital Constantine chooses old Greek Byzantium: the routes from Europe to Asia and from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean meet there, and the peninsula is easily walled off from the land. The city is built fast, columns and statues carted in from all over the East, and in 330 it is solemnly dedicated as New Rome. It has a senate, grain doles and a hippodrome, but no old temples and no old aristocracy — from the start the capital is Christian and Greek in speech. The western half of the empire will weaken and fall, but this city will stand for more than a thousand years and give its name to what would later be called Byzantium.