Istanbul

Resumen del libro

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Life-filled and life-affirming history, steeped in romance and written with verve' GUARDIAN 'Richly entertaining and impeccably reserached' Peter Frankopan Istanbul has always been a place where stories and histories collide and crackle, where the idea is as potent as the historical fact. From the Qu'ran to Shakespeare, this city with three names - Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul - resonates as an idea and a place, and overspills its boundaries - real and imagined. Standing as the gateway between the East and West, it has served as the capital of the Roman, Byzantine, Latin and Ottoman Empires.

For much of its history it was known simply as The City, but, as Bettany Hughes reveals, Istanbul is not just a city, but a story. In this epic new biography, Hughes takes us on a dazzling historical journey through the many incarnations of one of the world's greatest cities. As the longest-lived political entity in Europe, over the last 6,000 years Istanbul has absorbed a mosaic of micro-cities and cultures all gathering around the core.

At the latest count archaeologists have measured forty-two human habitation layers. Phoenicians, Genoese, Venetians, Jews, Vikings, Azeris all called a patch of this earth their home. Based on meticulous research and new archaeological evidence, this captivating portrait of the momentous life of Istanbul is visceral, immediate and scholarly narrative history at its finest.

Biografía del autor

p b Bettany Hughes /b es una historiadora galardonada, reconocida por su labor en la difusión de la historia antigua y medieval durante más de veinticinco años. Académica de Oxford, ha enseñado en Oxford, Cambridge y otras universidades internacionales, además de ser profesora de Historia en el New College of the Humanities. Es autora de i best sellers /i como Estambul: i La ciudad de los tres nombres. /i Ha presentado más de cincuenta documentales para cadenas como BBC y Netflix, vistos por más de 250 millones de personas. Hughes ha recibido numerosos premios y condecoraciones: es dama de la Orden del Imperio británico y Cruz Dorada de la Orden de la Beneficencia de la República Helénica, por su contribución a la cultura y la historia.<br>