Back to Introduction

Viewing the city

Conquerors and Defenders: 1453

Sources

C. T. Riggs (trans.) Critoboulus, History of Mehmed the Conqueror (Princeton, 1954) and online

Georgios Sfrantzes, . A contemporary Greek source for the siege of Constantinople 1453, translation and commentary by Margaret Carroll

- trans. by M. Philippides, The Fall of the Byzantine Empire. A chronicle by George Sphrantzes, 1401-77 (Amherst, 1980)

- To hroniko tes aloseos : [accounts of the capture of Constantinople], Georgiou Frantze [kai] Mihael Douka. (Athenai : Papyros Press, 1971)

H. Magoulias trans., Dukas, Decline and fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks (Detroit, Wayne State, 1975)

A. Pertusi ed., La Caduta di Costantinopoli (Verona, 1976)

Nicolò Barbaro, Diary of the Siege of Constantinople, trans. J. Melville-Jones (New York 1969).

J. Melville-Jones, The Siege of Constantinople: Seven Contemporary Accounts (Amsterdam 1972)

A. Pertusi and A. Carile edd., Testi inediti e poco noti sulla caduta di Costantinopoli (Bologna, 1983)

Studies

  C. Mijatovic, Constantine, the last emperor of the Greeks : or, The conquest of Constantinople, 1453. (1892)

Edwin Pears, The destruction of the Greek empire and the story of thecapture of Constantinople by the Turks. (1903 reprinted 1969)

  Le cinq-centieme anniversaire de la prise de Constantinople, 1453-1953, L'Hellenisme contemporain. (Athènes, 1953).

  The fall of Constantinople : a symposium held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, 29 May 1953 Steven Runciman et al. (London, 1955)

  S. Runciman, The fall of Constantinople 1453. (1965)

    Donald Nicol, The immortal Emperor: the life and legend of Constantine Palaiologos, last emperor of the Romans (Cambridge, 1992) Excerpts on www- and www

- Last Centuries of Byzantium (Cambridge, 1993), Chapter 18

Roger Crowley, Constantinople: the last great siege, 1453 (London, 2005)

The myths

The Greek View :

And poem by Odysseas Elytis

The Turkish view: The Liberation of Constantinople

Walter Hanak, Marios Philippides trans., Nestor-Iskander : The Tale of Constantinople : Of Its Origin and Capture in the Year 1453 , Late Byzantine & Ottoman Studies, No 5 (1997)

Walter Hanak. 'Some historiographical observations on the sources of Nestor-Iskander's The Tale of Constantinople', in R. M. Beaton, C. M. Roueché edd, The Making of Byzantine History (London, 1993). 35-45.

Back to Introduction

Page revised March 1, 2007