Istanbul was formerly the capital of the Byzantine and the Ottoman Empire. In recent history, after Ankara was preferred as capital of Turkey, Istanbul has taken on the features of a non-industrialized city which, over 30 years, has seen its population increase from one million to six million inhabitants and has developed in sprawling poverty-stricken suburbs. Istanbul was founded by Constantine the Great on an arid, windy promontory which allowed navigation control in the Bosphorus. No more that a century ago, the city started to expand out of its original site and in the late 1990s, paradoxically, it is a linear city that sprawls along the coast for over 12 kilometres. This issue of Rassenga tells the story of Istanbul, which was first given the Byzantine urban layout, then transformed in the Ottoman period, and whose architecture has been subject to a process of westernization from the end of the 19th century.