Constantinople Becomes Capital: Rome's Power Shifts East
Constantine picked a fishing town where Europe meets Asia and spent the treasury building churches. Forty thousand workers had six years to turn Byzantium into something that could rival Rome—forums, hippodromes, walls thick enough to stop armies for a millennium. He called it Nova Roma at the dedication. Nobody cared. Within a generation, everyone just said Constantinople, the city of Constantine. The name he chose disappeared. The name he didn't choose lasted 1,600 years. Sometimes the crowd writes history better than emperors.
May 11, 330
1696 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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