Istanbul's 2,700 years on one map: the city growing from the founding of Chalcedon in 685 BC to 2026 — its walls, fires, earthquakes and changes of rule. 56 events, five eras, four minutes.

The map was built in Blender from real geographic data, with every card, pin and counter locked to the map's camera. The score was written for this film and changes with the eras.

00:00 Opening — Istanbul today, descending the Bosphorus
00:31 685 BC — Chalcedon and Byzantion
00:49 Rome: the city of Septimius Severus
00:59 Constantinople
01:14 Hagia Sophia
01:41 1204 — the Fourth Crusade
02:01 1453 — the conquest
02:37 The 19th century — reform and modernisation
02:55 1923 — the Republic
03:07 The bridges
03:19 Today
03:41 End credits

SOURCES AND LICENCES
• Music: original score written for this film, recorded with the VSCO-2 Community Edition samples (CC0) — https://github.com/sgossner/VSCO-2-CE
• Coastline, city walls, streets: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL — https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
• Built-up area 1975–2020: European Commission, JRC — GHSL Data Package 2023 (GHS-BUILT-S R2023A), CC BY 4.0
• Terrain: Copernicus DEM GLO-30 — © DLR e.V. 2010–2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014–2018, provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA
• Sea depth: EMODnet Bathymetry Consortium, EMODnet Digital Bathymetry (DTM), CC BY 4.0 — https://emodnet.ec.europa.eu
• Land cover: ESA WorldCover 10 m 2021 v200 — © ESA WorldCover project / contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021) processed by the ESA WorldCover consortium, CC BY 4.0

3D models (Sketchfab, CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., recoloured and rescaled for the map:
• "Hagia Sophia" — Iron Furkan 7 — https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/hagia...
• "Hagia Sophia without minarets" — tijmen_h — https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/hagia...
• "İstanbul Galata Tower model" — Rami Az — https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/istan...
• "Maiden's Tower" — Erbay Çelik — https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/maide...
• "Greek temple == Templo Grego" — Gustavo Farias — https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/greek...
• "Circus Maximus Project" — salvis1 — https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/circu...

Note: pre-Ottoman street layouts, settlement extents and the Greek, Severan and Constantinian wall lines are illustrative reconstructions, not archaeological plans. Population figures before 1885 are estimates; the 2026 figure is the TÜİK ADNKS 2025 provincial population.

#Istanbul #History #Timelapse