From the historian's notes

Constantinople, 1200

Turkey · Europe/Middle East (ambiguous) · April 1200 · spring

What it was high

still enormous — perhaps 300,000-400,000 (estimates vary widely) behind the Theodosian land walls; diminished from its peak, packed with relics, palaces, markets and a resented Latin merchant presenceByzantion refounded as Constantinople in 330; for most of the middle ages the largest and richest city in Christendom

That year

• the city intact: the Hippodrome's ancient bronzes — including the four gilded horses — still stand where they have for centuries; the relic collections (Pharos chapel and others) are complete; everything the 1204 sack scatters is still HERE, in place 1200 highthe entire fabric — this stop is a photograph of the before
• political rot in plain sight: a usurper-emperor, court intrigue around the blinded ex-emperor and his son (who will fetch the crusade here), unpaid soldiery, grumbling guilds c. 1200 highempire-wide, felt as street cynicism

Who held it high

the Roman Empire (ours calls it Byzantine; they say Romans, Romaioi)Emperor Alexios III Angelos — reigning over drift: he blinded and deposed his brother Isaac II to take the throne (1195); the treasury leaks, provinces slip, the fleet rotswithin recent memory: the Latin massacre (1182) poisoned relations with Venice, Pisa and Genoa, whose merchants nonetheless returned; taxes and usurpation gossip corrode loyalty. In Italy — she alone knows the weight of it — the Fourth Crusade begins organizing within two years

Its name high

Konstantinoupolis (Κωνσταντινούπολις); in every local mouth simply 'he Polis' — THE CityWritten in Greek

The date, there medium

AM 6708 (April 1200)Byzantine world-era (Anno Mundi, creation-dated), year beginning 1 September; indiction cycle for fiscal datingLiturgical hours toll on semantra (struck wooden boards) and some bells; the civil day divides into watches; the Great Palace and Hagia Sophia keep ceremonial time. The year begins in September and God's calendar outranks the sun's.

Money medium-high

gold hyperpyron; billon aspron trachy for daily tradethe debased trachy (cup-shaped) and copper tetartera beneatha caique ferry hop or a loaf: small billon/copper — order of magnitude only; the coinage is mid-debasement and money-changers thrive on the confusion

Weather medium

April: soft and changeable, 12-18 C; Judas trees purpling the shores, the Bosphorus wind-chopped

Things

Objectsgold hyperpyron coins and cupped billon trachea (the concave small change that puzzles every visitor); icons — painted, enameled, carried, kissed; silk in imperial grades with forbidden purples; lead seals on every document — the city runs on sealed paper; relics in gold: the industry above all industriesFoodbread from regulated bakeries; the grain fleet is policy; fish from the Bosphorus in obsessive variety (mackerel runs are civic events); cheese, olives, oil, wine — resinated and not; garos fish sauce descendants; honey sweets; Lenten rhythm shapes April eating — the fast's end is the season's feastClothsilk brocades on rank; linen and wool beneath; the maphorion veil for respectable women; eunuch court costume and guard regalia as street colorGetting aboutferries and caiques stitching the Horn and Bosphorus; mules in the stepped lanes; imperial post-horses beyond the walls; litters for great ladiesIn the airincense leaking out of a thousand churches; fish, tar and rope at the Horn; candle wax and mule dung on the Mese; sea wind through cypress

What she'd hear

Greek everywhere, in a medieval register; Latin/Italian dialects on the wharves; Slavonic, Armenian and Arabic in their quarters. Her learned Greek with an eastern story works; among Latins her French would work too — choosing WHICH foreigner to be, per street, is itself tradecraft the pack endorses.

Where she could stand

• Hagia Sophia under its dome — the Great Church — the largest interior in Christendom for six centuries and counting, gold above smoke
• the Hippodrome spina — the racecourse's monument spine: the serpent column of Delphi, obelisks, the four bronze horses over the starting gates
• the Mese under the porticoes — the colonnaded main street from the Milion mile-marker through the fora of Constantine and Theodosius
• the Golden Horn quays at the Latin quarters — Venetian and Pisan wharves, round ships, cranes and grudges
• the land walls walked at evening — the triple Theodosian line, moat to inner towers

Researched for this card · confidence high