Constantinople: The Story of the Old Capital of the Empire

Hutton wrote this love letter to a city that bridged two continents and two millennia. Constantinople occupies one of the most extraordinary strategic positions on earth: a harbor nestled between Asia and Europe where the waters of the Bosphorus meet the Sea of Marmara, a natural fortress that has commanded the trade routes between East and West for nearly three thousand years. The book traces the city's journey from the Greek colony of Byzantium to its transformation under Constantine the Great into the capital of the Roman Empire's eastern half, and ultimately into the heart of Byzantine Christianity and civilization. Hutton, writing in the late Victorian era when the Ottoman Empire still held the city, brings a scholar's precision and a romantic's ardor to his account, drawing on classical sources and his own evident fascination with how geography shapes destiny. The result is less a dry historical chronicle than an evocation of a place that has been conquered, burned, sacked, and resurrected more times than any city should survive. For readers who wonder why this dead capital still haunts the modern imagination, Hutton provides an answer written with genuine awe.