The Ottoman Porte grants Hirsch the Constantinople–Vienna railway concession

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Baron Maurice de Hirsch receives a concession to build and operate roughly 2,500 km of main and branch lines linking Constantinople to Vienna, with the Ottoman state guaranteeing a fixed payment per completed kilometre. Construction begins in January 1870 at four points at once — Constantinople, Dedeağaç, Salonica and Dobrljin — which is how a railway gets built across a mountainous province with no single continuous work front. This is the enabling act for everything that follows; the Orient Express is a service on this track, fourteen years later.

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