The first human payment in Istanbul, the monticule of Fikirtepe on the Anatolian side, takes place of the period of Chalcolithic, with worked objects going back to 5500 / 3500 BEFORE JESUS CHRIST. A left payment going up with the phenicians was discovered in close Kadıköy (Chalcedon). The course Moda in Chalcedon was the first place which the Greek colonists of Megara chose to colonize in 685 BEFORE JESUS CHRIST, before colonising Byzantion on the European side of Bosphorus under the ordering of King Byzas in 667 BEFORE JESUS CHRIST. Byzantion was established on the site of an ancient left payment called Lygos, rested by tribes of Thracian between the 13 and 11 centuries BEFORE JESUS CHRIST, with close Semistra, whose Plinius had mentioned in its historical accounts. Only some walls and substructures belonging to Lygos survived up to now, close to the point of Seraglio (Turkish /Sarayburnu), where the palate celebrates of Topkapı is held now. For the period of Byzantion, the Acropolis employed to be held where the palate of Topkapı is held today. After trimming with Pescennius Niger against victorious Septimius Severus the city was besieged by Rome and suffered extended to damage in ADVERTISEMENT 196. Byzance was rebuilt by the Roman emperor Septimius Severus and quickly regained its preceding prosperity, being temporarily retitré like Augusta Antonina by the emperor, in the honor of his/her son. The place of Byzance attracted Constantine the large one in 324 after it was said that a prophetic dream identifies the place of the city; but the true reason behind this prophecy was probably the final victory finished Licinius of Constantine to the battle of Chrysopolis (Üsküdar) over Bosphorus, on September 18, 324, which finished the civil war between the Roman Co/Emperors, and brought an end to the final vestiges of the system of Tetrarchy, during which Nicomedia (İzmit current, 100 kilometers in the east of Istanbul) was the Roman capital city elder.

Byzance (now retitrée as nova Roma which became Constantinopolis thereafter, C. - with - D. The town of Constantine) officially was proclaimed the new capital of the Roman empire six years after, in 330. After the death of Theodosius I in 395 and the permanent partition of the Roman empire between its two sons, Constantinople became the capital of the empire (bizantin) Roman Eastern. As well as to be the center of an imperial dynasty, the single position of Constantinople in the center of two continents made at the city a magnet for the international trade, culture and the diplomacy. The empire bizantin was distinctly Greek in the culture and became the center of Greek orthodoxe Christianity, whereas its capital was decorated with many splendid churches, including Hagia Sophia, once the largest cathedral of the world. The seat of the patriarch of Constantinople, spiritual chief of the Eastern orthodoxe church, motionless remainders in the zone of Fener (Phanar) of Istanbul. In 1204, the fourth crusade was launched to capture Jerusalem, but in the place had lit Constantinople, which was returned and profaned. The city later became the center of the catholic Latin empire, created by the cross ones to replace the orthodoxe empire bizantin, which was divided into a certain number of states of glare, whose empire of Nicaea was to take again Constantinople in 1261 pennies the ordering of Michael VIII Palaeologus.

Following centuries of decline, Constantinople became surrounded by younger and more powerful empires, in particular which Turks of stool. On May 29, 1453, the sultan Mehmed II 'the conqueror' Constantinople entered after a 53 day old seat and the city was promptly made with the new capital empire of stool. In the last decades of the empire bizantin, the city had been dilapidated while the state bizantin became more and more of insulation and financially in bankruptcy, its population had decreased approximately thirty or forty thousand people while the great sections remained uninhabited. Thus, duty of Mehmed of sultan the first was with the rejuvenate the city economically, creating the large bazaar and inviting the orthodoxe and catholic inhabitants of escape to turn over behind. Captured prisoners were released to arrange in the city while provincial governors in Rumelia and it Anatolia were ordered to send four thousand families to the bench on file in the city, if Moslems, Christian or Jew, to form a single cosmopolitan company. The sultan also equipped the city with various architectural monuments, including the palate of Topkapı and the mosque of sultan of Eyüp. Religious bases were established to place the construction of the large imperial mosques (such as the mosque of Fatih which was built on the spot where the church of the once held holy apostles), touched by their associated schools, of the hospitals and the baths of public. Suleiman the splendid reign was one period great artistic and architectural achievements. The architect celebrates Sinan conceived many large mosques and other buildings in the city, whereas arts of stool of ceramics and penmanship also opened out. Much of these Tekkes survives to date; some in the form of mosques while others have the museums become such as Cerrahi Tekke and Sünbül Efendi and of the mosques of Ramazan Efendi and Türbes in Fatih, Galata Mevlevihanesi in Beyoğlu, Yahya Efendi Tekke in Beşiktaş, and Bektaşi Tekke in Kadıköy, which serves now as the Moslems of Alevi de Cemevi. The city was modernized 1870s ahead with the construction of the bridges, the creation of a suitable system of water, the use of the electric lights, and the introduction of the trams and telephones. When the Turkish Republic was founded in 1923, the capital was moved from Istanbul in Ankara. In first years of the republic, Istanbul was given on in favour of the new capital. However, in the Fifties, Istanbul underwent the great structural change, because new roads and factories were built in all the city. Boulevards, the avenues and the broad modern places of public were established in Istanbul, sometimes at the expense of the demolition of much of historical buildings. The city once the many one and thrives Greek community, remainders of Greek origins of the city, decreased the shortly after pogrom 1955 of Istanbul, with the majority of the Greeks in Turkey leaving their houses for Greece. During the Seventies, the population of Istanbul started to increase quickly while people of Anatolia emigrated at the city in order to find employment in the many news factories which was built with the peripheries of the city. This sudden big rise of the population caused a fast rise in the development in housing (part of lower quality, having for result the deaths and of the damage during the frequent earthquakes which struck the city) and much in villages previously peripheral became absorbed in the larger metropolis of Istanbul. Today, as well as to be the largest city of the country, Istanbul is the financial, cultural, and economic center of modern Turkey.