Ab Urbe Condita
On 21 April 753 BC, according to tradition, Romulus founded Rome. The date is a fiction a Roman scholar calculated seven centuries later. The city it commemorates outlived every peer it ever had, and most of its successors.
Byzantine Empire
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The Wrong City
On 12 April 1204, Crusaders breached the walls of Constantinople. They had set out to free Jerusalem. They ended up sacking the greatest Christian city in the world - and dismantling the one barrier standing between Europe and the Ottoman advance.
The Law That Outlasted the Empire
On 7 April 529, Justinian I published the first instalment of the Corpus Juris Civilis - a codification of Roman law that outlasted the empire, shaped the medieval church, and provided the blueprint for the Napoleonic Code. It is still in use.
After Theodosius
On 17 January 395, Theodosius I died in Milan - the last man ever to govern a united Roman Empire. He left it to two sons, aged seventeen and ten. They never put it back together.
Nika
On 13th January 532, chariot fans burned half of Constantinople and nearly toppled the Byzantine emperor Justinian. He survived because his wife refused to run. The Hagia Sophia we visit today was built on those ashes.