Europeans often used Stamboul alongside Constantinople to refer to the whole of the city, but Turks used the former name only to describe the historic peninsula between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara. Pera was used to describe the area between the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, but Turks also used the name Beyolu, which is still in use today. However, with the Turkish Postal Service Law of 28 March 1930, the Turkish authorities formally requested foreigners to adopt stanbul, a name in existence since the 10th century, as the sole name of the city within their own languages.
Etymologically, the name "stanbul" (Turkish pronunciation: [istanbu], colloquially [stambu]) derives from the Medieval Greek phrase " " [is tim bolin] or, in the Aegean dialect, " " [is tam bolin] (Greek: , Modern Greek " " [stim boli]), which means "in the city" or "to the city" In modern Turkish, the name is written "stanbul", with a dotted , as the Turkish alphabet distinguishes between a dotted and dotless I. Also, while in English the stress is on the first syllable ("Is"), in Turkish it is on the second syllable ("tan"). Like Rome, Istanbul has been called "The City of Seven Hills" because the oldest part of the city is supposedly built on seven hills, each of which bears a historic mosque
History
First settlements
Byzantium
Byzantine remains of a column
found at Byzantium's acropolis,
located today within the
Topkap Palace complex.