Università Roma Tre

The Fall of Constantinople (“Ci sono luoghi in cui la storia è inevitabile come un incidente automobilistico — luoghi in cui la geografia provoca la storia. Uno è Istanbul, alias Costantinopoli, alias Bisanzio”. Iosif Brodskij)
The Byzantine History and Civilisation LM module, aimed at students of History of Art; Archaeology; Religions, Cultures, History; History and Society; Philology, Literature and History of Antiquity, will focus on the fall of Constantinople on 29th May 1453, after fifty-five days of siege by the Ottoman Turks, led by the young Sultan Mehmet II Fatih.
The course will first provide a brief historical overview of the Byzantine millennium, aimed at those who did not take the basic module of Byzantine Civilisation in the three-year degree. This will be followed by a topographical survey of the Byzantine capital, with a special focus on the defensive structures (the great Theodosian walls, the sea walls on the Sea of Marmara and the Golden Horn, the walls around the imperial palace of the Blacherne; and then the harbour, whose access, in case of attack, was barred to enemy ships by stretching a long chain from Constantinople to the small town of Pera/Galata). The course will then schematically reconstruct the various phases of the siege and the final battle, illustrating the new results that have emerged from the many years of research on the subject carried out by the chair of Byzantine Studies at Roma Tre. In particular, the fallacy of the widespread opinion according to which the victory of the Turkish army was ineluctable, due to numerical and armament superiority, or even due to the ‘will to fall’ (Braudel) of a politically ‘exhausted’ Byzantium, will be shown.
At the end of the course, likely between April and May, provided that the political situation in the Middle East permits, students will be invited to take part in an educational trip to Cappadocia, organised in collaboration with Sapienza – Università di Roma and the Italian Cultural Institute in Turkey. The main aim of the trip will be to visit the region’s principal Byzantine and Seljuk monuments and to demonstrate to participants, in situ, various elements covered during the lectures held in Rome.

MANDATORY TEXTS
- 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