For more than 1,000 years, Constantinople was the heart of first the Roman Empire and then the Byzantine Empire. A city of beauty and riches, it had lots of spectacular architecture and priceless art.
The Mese was the city’s main street. (Mese is the Greek word for “middle.”) If we could travel back in time and take a stroll down the Mese, what would we see?
The street is more than 80 feet wide. That’s wide enough for the parades that happen when a victorious emperor arrives home with his army. Shops line the street. The merchants and their customers come from many lands and speak many languages. If you stop to listen, most people are speaking the common language, Greek.
