Istanbul is the kind of city where you can’t possibly ignore its history - even if you tried. But why would you? While the modern metropolis is fascinating, sleek, advanced, and cosmopolitan, so it was also in previous eras. Indeed, Istanbul - and Constantinople, and Byzantium, back in the day - has embodied all those “modern” attributes for the last two thousand years. As the crossroads of Europe and Asia, and the capital of an astonishing four world empires, there’s a remarkable footprint of history nearly everywhere you look.