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Map tour · 1451–1461 · 8 stops · 3 min read
From the Throat-Cutter fortress to 29 May: a fifty-four-day siege
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18 February 1451
When the nineteen-year-old Mehmed II took the throne for the second time, Ottoman lands stretched from the Danube to central Anatolia. Right in the middle, on the crossing between the Balkans and Anatolia, one walled city remained outside: Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. It is the gap on the map.
Spring – August 1452
On the European shore of the Bosphorus, opposite Anadoluhisarı, the sultan had a new fortress built. Work picked up in spring 1452; the Zağanos Pasha tower rose in May and the fortress was finished at the end of August. Called Boğazkesen, “cutter of the strait”, it would cut the city off from supplies coming from the Black Sea and serve as a base for the besieging army. Today it is known as Rumelihisarı.
5–6 April 1453
The army reached the walls on 5 April; the sultan's tent was pitched on the hill beside the Lycus (Bayrampaşa) stream. On 6 April the city was called on to surrender and refused. The heaviest guns were placed opposite the stretch between the Adrianople Gate and the Gate of St Romanus (Topkapı), thought to be the weakest part of the walls. Baltaoğlu Süleyman Bey's fleet held the sea, while the mouth of the Golden Horn was closed by a chain stretched by the Byzantines.
20 April 1453
Three Genoese ships and one Byzantine ship bringing supplies broke through the Ottoman fleet off Yenikapı and reached the Golden Horn; a strong south-westerly wind kept the Ottoman oared galleys from manoeuvring. The setback unsettled the army. Grand Vizier Çandarlı Halil Pasha favoured lifting the siege; Akşemseddin, Zağanos Pasha and Molla Gürani wanted to go on. The sultan decided to continue.
21–22 April 1453
Because of the chain, the Golden Horn could not be entered from the sea. Sixty or seventy ships, hauled beforehand on slipways behind Galata and lined up on the hills, were let down into the Golden Horn on the night of 21–22 April. Which route they took is still debated. Seeing them there in the morning stunned the defenders: the weak Golden Horn walls were now threatened from two sides.
6–23 May 1453
Major assaults on the land walls followed on 6 and 12 May. On 16 May a tunnel dug under the walls was collapsed by a counter-tunnel; on 18 May a siege tower was burnt. The bombardment went on day and night. On 23 May the sultan sent an envoy one last time: if the city surrendered, its people and property would be spared and the emperor would receive the Morea. The offer was rejected.
29 May 1453
Before dawn on Tuesday the assault began on every front at once: the fleet pressed the sea walls while the main force struck between the Adrianople Gate and the Gate of St Romanus. When Giustiniani, who led the defence, was wounded and withdrew, resistance collapsed and the attackers entered near Topkapı. The last emperor, Constantine XI, died fighting. The fifty-four-day siege was over.
1453 – 1461
Now called Fatih, “the Conqueror”, Mehmed II made the city his capital. Greeks who paid their ransom or came back were allowed to settle in the emptied city, and people were brought in from other towns by forced resettlement. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, the conquest marks the definitive foundation of the Ottoman state and paved the way for the great conquests that followed. The Morea fell in 1460 and Trebizond in 1461: the last states left over from Byzantium disappeared.
The texts are based on the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam articles below. Borders are drawn from the atlas's regional data and are approximate; see the Method page.