Location
Located on a peninsula and surrounded on its seaward sides by the Sea of Marmara (Propontis in Greek/Roman antiquity), the Bosphorus, and the Golden Horn, their main purpose was to protect the city from landward attacks; these attacks over the city's long 1,600 years of existence included several sieges, the most notable one probably being Mehmed II's conquest of 1453, which marks the conventional end of medieval history and beginning of the early modern world, although the term "fall if Constantinople" has been sometimes misinterpreted as referring solely to this event rather than the 1204–61 Latin takeover as well.
