The city of walls: Constantinople - Lars Brownworth

The world owes much of its cultural legacy to Constantinople's walls. When Constantinople was under seige by neighboring enemies, the Roman city's elaborate system of moats, outer walls, and inner walls stood tall. Surviving numerous fire attacks, the walls were eventually brought down by more modern tools of warfare, but, thankfully, classical culture survived.

Lesson by Lars Brownworth, animation by Woland.

[imperator]

Constantine must've been like, "We are going to build a wall, and we'll make the Huns pay for it!"

[Jack-c]

Romulus would be proud how the last Romans and their Emperor died fighting for their last city.

[PedroVieira]

The City of walls? You mean, Ba Sing Se?

[jacksonthesyndicalist]

*sniff *sniff i kind of want to go play eu4 byzantium now.

[chandlercampbell]

who thought it was a good idea to make it look like the viewers screens are all dirty?

[yasmin-mvvg]

My mother being from Istanbul, and my family visiting it every year, this video was absolutely brilliant for me. It's amazing to really know the history of the city.

[OmarExplains]

Yes, but did they find titans in the walls?

[GRBoi]

Hearing the "Byzantines" be called by their proper historical name, Romans, was a healing and refreshing experience lol

[TheeBeard]

One of the best TED-ED to date! I will use this to teach Byzantium and Ottomans in my upcoming unit on Anatolia. Thanks!

[theshadow]

Fun Fact: The "Ottoman Cannon" or Dardanelles gun was invented by a Hungarian.

Now that I think about it, If the 4th crusade hadn't happened, the Byzantines might have been wealthy enough to purchase the cannon and retake their land with cutting edge technology. So i suppose you can weigh the options: Europe flourishing into the renaissance using the remnants of the byzantine empire, or the Roman empire still existing, most likely to today even.

[enesamederel]

"If they have a greatest walls of the world we must prepare biggest canon of history."
-Mehmet The Conqueror (He was 21 when conquered the byzantine empire. And the "Şahi Canons" designed by him in person.)

[RocketHarry]

You forgotten how the Venetian 4th crusade took the city by going over the shorter sea walls and how the Empire of Nicaea recaptured it from the Latins in 1261 via secrete passage while the Latin garrison was out raiding the Nicaean island of Daphnousia.

[cardenasr.]

Subscribed because you call Byzantines "Romans". Great work.

[rickrose]

These are the famous Theodosian walls, and they protected an empire that waxed and waned, but lasted 1100 years.
For an exciting, page-turning history, see John Julius Norwich's 'A Short History of Byzantium', a shortened version of his own three-volume work. Never a dull moment.

[TheManWhoDoubts]

The story of the Turks overcoming that wall is not complete, and it is a great story. The teller stopped telling the story in best part of it !!
the Turks literally drove their boats on the land getting into the golden horn.

[asyb]

But can the walls defend against a colossal titan

[StarBoundFables]

Wow, that's so fascinating! I love how the self-proclaimed 'Scourge of God' looked @ those walls, & just turned around

[Galloslav]

Never tought about Constantinople this way. You made me curious about that city in their times. Thank you.

[Rickamajig]

The guy that made this video, Lars Brownworth, has a 17 episode podcast series about the Byzantine Empire titled '12 Byzantine Rulers: The History of the Byzantine Empire'. I highly recommend it for more information about that time period and Constantinople from this very same person. It's a shame they didn't link it in the video description.

[DaDunge]

The turks didn't destroy the byzantine empire, the fourth crusade did, all the turks did was defeat the remnants. The sword of chistendom fell upon it's shield and Rome crumbled as a result.