ISTANBUL

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In 658 B.C.a group of Dorian colonists under King Byzas founded a colonaly on the European shores of the Bosphorus. Thanks to this felicitous geographical position (through the straits of the Bosphorus the Black Sea communicates with the Sea of the Marmara wich in turn the Dardanelles empties out in to Mediterranean) Byzantium soon became an important trading center. In 1453, the ambitious Sultan Mehmet II surrended Cristian Costantinople and than the city passed into the hands of Ottomans. The power of the Ottoman empire reached its zentih with Süleyman the Magnificent, whose great architect Sinan embellished the city with magnificent mosques, bridges, palaces, fountains.

In 1923 the capital was transferred to ankara, but it is in Istanbul and its glorious monuments that its thousand years of history will live on.

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