Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire was the eastern half of the Roman Empire that kept going for almost 1,000 years after the western half fell. It lasted from 330 CE to 1453 CE. Its capital was the city of Constantinople, which today is called Istanbul, in modern Turkey. At its largest, the empire stretched across parts of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.

The empire began when the Roman emperor Constantine moved his capital east in 330 CE. He picked a small Greek town called Byzantium and rebuilt it into a giant new city. He named it Constantinople, meaning "Constantine's city." When the western Roman Empire fell to invaders in 476 CE, the eastern half kept right on going. The people who lived there did not call themselves Byzantines. They called themselves Romans, and they spoke Greek.

Constantinople was one of the greatest cities of the medieval world. Huge stone walls protected it on three sides, and the sea protected the fourth. These walls held off attackers for more than a thousand years. Inside, the city had paved streets, public baths, hospitals, and bustling markets full of silk, spices, and gold from across the known world.

The most famous building in Constantinople was the Hagia Sophia. Emperor Justinian finished it in 537 CE. It was the largest church in the world for almost a thousand years. Its huge dome rises 180 feet, taller than a 17-story building, and seems to float on a ring of windows. Justinian also wrote down all the old Roman laws into one giant book called the Code of Justinian. Many countries still use ideas from his code today.

The Byzantines were Christian. Over time, their church grew apart from the church in Rome. In 1054 CE, the two churches officially split. The eastern church became the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is still followed by hundreds of millions of people today.

The empire shrank slowly over the centuries. Arab armies took its lands in the Middle East and North Africa. Crusaders from western Europe even attacked Constantinople in 1204 and looted it. The empire never fully recovered. By the 1400s, it was just the city of Constantinople and a little bit of land around it.

The end came in 1453. The Ottoman Turks, led by a 21-year-old sultan named Mehmed II, surrounded the city with huge cannons. After a 53-day siege, the great walls finally cracked. Constantinople fell, and the Byzantine Empire ended. But its art, laws, and religion shaped Russia, Greece, and much of eastern Europe for centuries afterward.