Università Roma Tre

This section of the Byzantine Civilization teaching, addressed to graduate students of History and Art, Archaeology, and Religious Sciences, aims to investigate the reasons behind the fall of Constantinople and the way in which it fell in the hands of the Osman Turks, along with the direct and indirect consequences brought by this fall to the history of the Mediterranean civilization.

Firstly, this module shall deal with a topographical investigation of Constantinople, based on literary and figurative attestations that Byzantine writers and especially foreign travellers of the 14th and the 15th century offer on the city’s monuments, neighborhoods’ organizations and location and on the defensive structure, which includes but it is not limited to the great Theodosian walls.

Secondly, it shall reconstruct the final phases of the siege as well as the final battle.

Then, it shall unbiasedly analyse what was, contrary to popular belief, a not-so-predictable Turkish victory, which was the consequence of a superiority both numerical and of the military means or, with the words of Braudel, of the voluntary ‘will to fall’ of a politically exhausted Byzantium. On the contrary, the battle outcomes was unpredictable until the end, and what happened at last left speecheless and disoriented political observers from all around the world.

- S. Ronchey, Lo Stato bizantino, Torino, Einaudi, 2002

- A. Pertusi (a c. di), La caduta di Costantinopoli, 2 voll., Fondazione Lorenzo Valla / Mondadori, Milano 1976