The Walls

Like any ancient city Constantinople was a city of walls. The map indicates the successive enlargement of the city under the Roman emperor Severus Septimus in the 2th century BC, Constantine the Great in the 4th century AD and under Theodosius II who built the Land Walls in 413 thus giving the city its definitive borders, parts of which are still standing today. The Land Walls were further protected by a moat, which has long disappeared. 96 inner towers and 9 gates as well as a number of harbors punctuated the Walls. Except for the Theodosian Golden Gate the walls remained unadorned. The sheer mass and design of these walls indicate why they were perhaps the most lasting and effective defensive walls of the ancient world; indeed, they protected the city for some 1000 years, yielding only—and then grudgingly—to the massive cannon of the Ottoman conqueror Mehmed II in 1453.