The View from the Bridge - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 9

following year, 1452, he constructed the fortress of Rumeli Hisarı on
the Bosphorus, just across the narrow straits from the Turkish fortress
of Anadolu Hisarı, which had been built around 1395 by Sultan
Beyazit I. The two fortresses thus completely cut of Constantinople
from the Black Sea, the first step in the blockade of the capital. In
March of 1453 the Ottoman navy sailed into the Sea of Marmara,
cutting of Byzantium from the West and completing the blockade.
Then, in the first week of April in that year, Sultan Mehmet massed
his armies in Thrace and marched them into position before the land
walls of the city, thus beginning a siege which was to last for seven
weeks. The Byzantines and their Italian allies, who were outnumbered
more than ten to one, defended the city valiantly, until their strength
and resources were nearly gone. Finally, on 29 May 1453, the Turks
forced their way through a breach in the shattered land walls and
poured into the city. Constantine XI Dragases, the last Byzantine
Emperor, fought on bravely with his men until he was killed on the
walls of his fallen city, thus bringing to an heroic end the long and
illustrious history of Byzantium.
According to the custom of the age, Sultan Mehmet, now called
Fatih, or the Conqueror, gave over the city to his soldiers to pillage for
three days after it was captured. Immediately afterwards the Sultan
began to restore the city, repairing the damage it had sustained during
the siege and in the decades of decay before the Conquest. A year
or so later, Sultan Mehmet constructed a palace on the Third Hill,
on the site of which the Beyazit Fire Tower now stands. Some years
afterwards he built a more extensive palace, Topkapı Sarayı, whose
domes and spires still adorn the First Hill, the ancient acropolis of
the city. By 1470 he had completed the great mosque which bears his
name; Fatih Camii, the Mosque of the Conqueror. This mosque, which
was comparable in size to Haghia Sophia, was the centre of a complex
of pious foundations, religious and philanthropic institutions of one
sort or another. Many of Fatih's vezirs followed his example, building
mosques and pious foundations of their own, each of which soon
became the centre of its local neighbourhood, together developing
into the new Muslim town of Istanbul. Fatih also repeopled the city,
which had lost much of its population in the decades preceding the