Welcome
2011 Farr 40 European Championship
08-16 October 2011

Istanbul is not the usual seaside town. The Marmara Sea, the Bosphorous and the Golden Horn, at the end point of the water chain from the Aral Lake in Asia to the Black Sea, have resulted with flooding from the Aegean Sea during prehistoric tectonic events, providing a passage way that has influenced settlement in the site of Istanbul some 800 years ago. Other excavations have uncovered 27 settlement sites dating back to the lower paleolithic, neolithic and the chalcolithic ages (7th to 1st millenia BC) relics of which are shown in local museums. Today's districts of Silivri (Selymbria) on Europe and Kadiköy (Khalkedon) on Asia were colonised by Megarians from Boiotia in Greece and the colony of Byzantion was established in 667 BC. After Persian domination (6th and 5th cntr. BC) and Macedonian presence  (4th century BC),  it became a Roman city in 196 BC,  and the new capital  of the Roman Empire in 330 AD, when it was named Constantinopolis in tribute to its founder Constantinus I.  There are superb displays in local museums of  statues, carvings, coins, ornaments, implements, arms and documents from the post Roman era.
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