ISTANBUL, CONSTANTINOPLE, BYZANTIUM...

The Sultan Ahmet Camii in Istanbul

The Grandma has arrived to Istanbul on The Orient Express although she has decided to not visit the city. She's reading the travel guide and she wants to know about the different names of this historic city.

Istanbul, historically known as Constantinople and Byzantium, is the most populous city in Turkey and the country's economic, cultural, and historic center. Istanbul is a transcontinental city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosphorus strait, which separates Europe and Asia, between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Its commercial and historical center lies on the European side and about a third of its population lives on the Asian side.

More information: Istanbul by Lonely Planet

The city's biggest attraction is its historic center, partially listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its cultural and entertainment hub can be found across the city's natural harbor, the Golden Horn, in the Beyoğlu district.

The first known name of the city is Byzantium, the name given to it at its foundation by Megarean colonists around 660 BCE. The name is thought to be derived from a personal name, Byzas. Ancient Greek tradition refers to a legendary king of that name as the leader of the Greek colonists. Modern scholars have also hypothesized that the name of Byzas was of local Thracian or Illyrian origin and hence predated the Megarean settlement.

After Constantine the Great made it the new eastern capital of the Roman Empire in 330 CE, the city became widely known as Constantinopolis, which, as the Latinized form of Konstantinoúpolis, means the City of Constantine. 

More information: Historic Areas of Istanbul, UNESCO

The Maiden Tower in Istanbul

By the 19th century, the city had acquired other names used by either foreigners or Turks. Europeans used Constantinople to refer to the whole of the city, but used the name Stamboul, as the Turks also did, to describe the walled peninsula between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara.  

Pera was used to describe the area between the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, but Turks also used the name Beyoğlu, today the official name for one of the city's constituent districts. Islambol, meaning either City of Islam or Full of Islam was sometimes colloquially used to refer to the city, and was even engraved on some Ottoman coins, but the belief that it was the precursor to the present name, İstanbul, is belied by the fact that the latter existed well before the former and even predates the Ottoman conquest of the city.

Istanbul is inspiring because it has its own code of architecture, literature, poetry, music.

 Christian Louboutin