Das Ander Buch / Constantinopel.

Title

Das Ander Buch / Constantinopel.

Bird's eye view of the Turkish city of Istanbul (formerly Constantinople). On the reverse 2 images once with the emperor Constantius (the 39th emperor) and Constantinus (the 40th emperor).

ca. 1550

Artist

Münster (1489-1552)

Sebastian Münster (1489–1552) was a leading Renaissance cosmographer. His most famous work, the Cosmographia (1544), was a comprehensive description of the world with 24 maps, based on research dating back to 1528. Continuously revised, the 1550 edition already included many new maps. It was the first scientific yet accessible world description published in German, illustrated with numerous woodcuts by artists such as Hans Holbein the Younger. Between 1544 and 1650, the Cosmographia appeared in 46 editions (27 in German) and was translated into several languages. Münster’s work combined the knowledge of scholars, artists, and travelers and remained influential long after his death.

Historical Description

Constantinople was the capital city of the Roman and Byzantine (330 –1204 and 1261–1453), the Latin (1204–1261), and the Ottoman (1453–1922) empires. It was reinaugurated in 324 AD at ancient Byzantium, as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine the Great, after whom it was named, and dedicated on 11 May 330.In the 12th century, the city was the largest and wealthiest European city and it was instrumental in the advancement of Christianity during Roman and Byzantine times. After the loss of its territory, the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire was reduced to just its capital city and its environs, eventually falling to the Ottomans in 1453. Following the Muslim conquest, the former bastion of Christianity in the east, Constantinople, was turned into the Islamic capital of the Ottoman Empire, under which it prospered and flourished again. After the founding of the modern Republic of Turkey the successor state of the Ottoman Empire the city was renamed Istanbul in 1923. Istanbul is probably the Turkish modification of the ancient Greek. This interpretation seems conclusive, because those who spoke colloquially "the city" in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages in the Eastern Roman Empire generally meant Constantinople, which, with its five hundred thousand inhabitants and its mighty walls, could not be compared to any other city in a wide area .