1570 Constantinople des Griechischen Lenserchumbs Hauptstatt/im Land Thracia am moere gelegen

This is one of the earliest published maps of the great city of Constantinople as it appeared just seventeen years after its conquest in 1453 by Ottoman Emperor Fetih Mehmed (Mehmet the Conqueror).  The map is accompanied by text in German on both the face and verso. Munster’s map of the great city of Constantinople, while geographically imperfect, conveys a sense of the grandeur of the city which had been the capital of the eastern Roman Empire from the time of Constantine the Great till its fall to the Ottomans in May 1453. The city had many appelations throughout its history, all of which described its marveled beauty, its great strength of position and its impregnability. Despite the depredations by the Venetians in 1204, the city retained its beauty and allure to the extent that when Medhmed II was yet a boy he had already conceived the idea of seizing what the Ottomans often referred to as ‘The Golden Apple’, and spent his formative years with the idea of capturing the city alway