The conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks (1453) was a shocking and, indeed, epoch changing event for the whole of Europe, marking the definitive collapse of the ancient Eastern Roman Empire. However, the regime instituted by the City’s new rulers (depicted on the frame of the map) proved tolerant  towards the empire’s ethnic and religious minorities. Proof of this is the district of Pera, on the eastern bank of the Bosphorus (shown on the right of the map). An ancient settlement of Italian merchants, particularly Genoese, which was inhabited by an Italo-Levantine community as late as the beginning of the twentieth century.