Ottoman capture of Constantinople
Mehmed II takes Constantinople; the last emperor, Constantine XI, dies in the fighting. For historians who date Rome's end by the continuity of the Roman state and its self-description, this is the terminus - 977 years after 476. Even this is not clean: Mehmed adopted the title Kayser-i Rum, Caesar of Rome, and the Ottoman claim to Roman succession was taken seriously by contemporaries.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Constantinople · city · Türkiye
- Roman Law · institution · Mediterranean-wide · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent. This is the standing of the weakest source, not an average.
Periodisation of Roman civilisation and the Roman/Byzantine continuity debate
Where to end the Roman Empire is an open scholarly question with several defensible answers - 476, 480, 554, 602, 800 and 1453 among them - and the choice reflects the historian's criterion (western imperial office, state continuity, material culture, self-identification) rather than a discoverable fact. A substantial 'continuity' school treats the eastern Roman state as unbroken to 1453.
Wikipedia (survey article with scholarly citations); Momigliano, Brown, Ward-Perkins, Kaldellis · accessed 2026 · Partly verified
Survey and bibliography at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_period ; key positions: A. Momigliano (1936 onwards), P. Brown (late antiquity as transformation), B. Ward-Perkins (2005, 'The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization'), A. Kaldellis (Roman continuity)
How Byzantines saw themselves: Romans, not 'Byzantines'
The eastern empire's formal name remained the Roman Empire, its ruler was basileus ton Rhomaion (emperor of the Romans), and its inhabitants called themselves Rhomaioi. 'Byzantine' is a 16th-century scholarly coinage, not a self-description - which undercuts any account that treats the Roman Empire as having ended while that state was still running.
Medievalists.net, reporting current scholarship · April 2026 · Partly verified
https://www.medievalists.net/2026/04/byzantines-romans/ ; underlying position associated with A. Kaldellis, 'Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium', Harvard, 2019
Recorded on Constantinople
- Traditional foundation of the Roman Republic
- The Augustan settlement: Octavian becomes Augustus
- The Antonine Constitution (Constitutio Antoniniana)
- Dedication of Constantinople
- Administrative division of the empire on the death of Theodosius I
- Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus - the contested 'fall' of the Western Roman Empire
- Plague reaches the Mediterranean
- Ottoman capture of Constantinople
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- Plague reaches the Mediterranean · 1347
- Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus - the contested 'fall' of the Western Roman Empire · 0476-09-04
- Administrative division of the empire on the death of Theodosius I · 0395
- Dedication of Constantinople · 0330-05-11
- The Antonine Constitution (Constitutio Antoniniana) · 0212
- The Augustan settlement: Octavian becomes Augustus · -0027
- Traditional foundation of the Roman Republic · 509 BCE