In the year 536 AD, a mysterious event plunged the world into darkness for a year and a half. Constantinople writers of the time described the sun as dimmed and blotted out, causing crop failures,...
In the shadowy world of ancient warfare, one weapon stood out as a true marvel: Greek fire. In the 7th century AD, the Byzantine Empire harnessed the power of fire with the creation of Greek fire, a...
These days, it seems that if an author wants to go straight to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, all they need to do is release a tell-all memoir or biography aimed at a famous...
The continents of Europe and Asia shake hands across Istanbul’s Bosporus Strait, connecting the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara which in turn connects to the Mediterranean Sea through the Dardanelles...
Towering over Istanbul atop one of its highest hills, Hagia Sophia has stood for over 1,500 years as an architectural wonder, one of the largest and most remarkable Christian churches ever built. Its...
Centuries before Versailles, Buckingham Palace and the Kremlin Palace, on the shore where the Western world meets the East, cupped by the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus Strait and the Golden Horn,...
Between Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks, coffee is everywhere. If you’re a coffee lover, you may have wondered about how coffee came to be throughout history. In early times, however, some people...
For over 1,000 years, Constantinople held out against a never-ending stream of failed attacks. Capital of the Byzantine Empire, a.k.a. the Eastern Roman Empire , it was famed for its heavily...
A rare 2,300-year-old Hellenistic cremation burial has been discovered in Istanbul. Artifacts discovered in the Hellenistic-era burial tomb are revealing secrets about the city of ancient Chalcedon,...
The hooded gaze of an inscrutable Theodora (c.497- 548 AD) greets hundreds of thousands of visitors each year as they pay their respects to her mosaic at the Basilica of Saint Vitale in Ravenna ,...
Recently, two unidentified men, conducting an illegal excavation, stumbled upon an invaluable piece of history in western Turkey. The robbers had inadvertently unearthed a rare mosaic that was once...
Almost everyone at the Istanbul Topkapi Palace was a slave, but this is not the only curious attribute the palace had when ruled by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. Everyone was forced to learn and...
Vardan Mamikonian was an Armenian military leader who lived between the 4 th and 5 th centuries AD. He is best-known for leading the Armenians against the Sassanians at the Battle of Avarayr in 451...
At one time a cathedral, later a mosque, and now the chief museum of the Turkish Republic, Hagia Sophia, in the ancient Byzantine imperial capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul), was a world-famous...
Constantinople stood against sieges and attacks for many centuries, until finally new technology—the big cannons of the Ottoman Empire —brought down the Byzantine Empire’s capital. The fall of...
The fascinating and exotic history of the Empire of Trebizond, which existed between the 13th and 15th centuries AD, is a great story. This empire occupied the southern coast of the Black Sea, and...