Sieben Hügel

Die imaginäre Topographie Konstantinopels zwischen apokalyptischem Denken und moderner Wissenschaft

Abstract

The city of Constantinople is named after its founder, Constantine the Great. He built it according to the pattern of Ancient Rome. So much is undisputed. But the opinion expressed in modern handbooks and reference works is that the New Rome, like the ancient, sat upon seven hills, derives from an interesting mistake. Till today one can find descriptions in the topography of Constantinople – in an unbroken tradition since the 16th century – of several hills as a system of topographical order. But to Constantine and his contemporaries, and also for the following four centuries, the seven hills of their city were totally unknown. Not until the end of the 7th century does the metaphor of the city on seven hills appear in our sources – and then not as a form of topographical information. The earliest modern research, beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries, created the fiction of seven distinctive hills. It remained unrecognised that this was part of a process of transferring the designation of the Old Rome – »the great whore of Babylon« of the Revelation of John – to the New Rome, Constantinople. It is possible to describe the different periods in this transfer and to show the diverse historical backgrounds. Here we can see an interesting example of the penetration of an eschatological metaphor into »real« life.