The Antiquities of Constantinople [Paperback]

Pierre Gilles (Author), John Ball (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1986 | ISBN-10: 0934977011 | ISBN-13: 978-0934977012 | Edition: 2nd Rev

A first-hand description of Constantinople (Istanbul) by this French humanist and diplomat c. 1550, during the age of Sleiyman the Magnificent. Gilles discusses the city's rich history and describes the hills, palaces, temples and churches, the markets, cisterns, columns, baths and other ancient monuments of this great capital.

Illustrated, new introduction, bibliography, index, glossary, and five new maps. Based on John Ball's 1729 translation from Latin. Second edition, third printing.

Editorial Reviews

Review

As a humanist-archeologist, Gilles uses his ancient Greek and Latin sources with a keen detective's eye and a fine sense of critical judgment. "Wandering across the hills of the city with Gilles is a delight." -- Seventeenth-Century News, Fall 1988

Gilles...explores a history so densely layered that one street corner could bear witness to the entire march of western civilization by turns Greek, Roman, Christian, and Moslem. -- Small Press, June 1988

From the Publisher

When Pierre Gilles visited it in 1544, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city of the Western world. Its 700,000 Turks, Greeks, Jews, Armenians, Gypsies, Arabs and Africans, Slavs, Italians, French and others worshipped in over 400 mosques and dozens of Christian churches; they bought and sold in tens of thousands of small shops; they plied its waters in thousands of small ships. Each year the city consumed over 100,000 tons of wheat and other cereals and hundreds of thousands of heads of cattle and sheep. This was an age of bold and enduring architecture, of dazzling ceramics and textiles, of brilliant poetry and history, of religious zeal and philosophical thought. It was an age of vast empire and expanding wealth and power: it was the age of Sleiyman the Magnificent.

Gilles' record of his visit offers one of the most fascinating journals of discovery yet produced. Yet, unlike the voyages of Marco Polo or Columbus, Gilles' discoveries were rather of invisible cities, of the topography and inhabitants of a long-lost imperial capital: Constantinople as it existed in the great Christian age of Justinian and the late Roman Empire. His discoveries reconstruct the ancient city, piece by piece, like an editor working on a newly rediscovered text.

The Antiquities of Constantinople also breaths the air of great travels. It conveys Gilles' delight in the city's parks and gardens, its vistas from the heights of Pera over the seven hills and to the snow-clad mountains of Asia. It records his love of the city's blue waters and their myriads of fish and darting sails. The book shows great attention to architectural detail and a skilled scholar's eye, but it also reveals a wry wit and an unflappable curiosity that have been the best companions of travelers through the ages.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Italica Pr; 2nd Rev edition (June 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0934977011
• ISBN-13: 978-0934977012
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,149,482 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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