The Ottoman Empire across three continents

From a small principality in north-western Anatolia around 1300, the Ottomans grew over six centuries into an empire straddling Europe, Asia and Africa. The capture of Constantinople in 1453 ended the Byzantine Empire and gave them a capital astride the straits between two continents.

By the failed siege of Vienna in 1683 the empire had reached its European peak, ruling the Balkans, Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt, Mesopotamia and much of the North African coast. Move the ChronoAtlas timeline to watch that rise, the long retreat that followed, and its dissolution after the First World War.

Key facts

• The conquest of Constantinople in 1453 is often taken to mark the end of the Middle Ages.
• Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520-1566) presided over the empire's golden age of law, architecture and expansion.
• At its peak the empire controlled the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and the key trade routes of the eastern Mediterranean.
• The Republic of Turkey was proclaimed in 1923 from the empire's Anatolian heartland.