The modern city of İstanbul is the sixth largest metropolis in the world. Its beginnings were modest but important settlements dating from the later part of the Stone Age. Recent discoveries have suggested that the area has been inhabited since the 7th millennium BC. Artifacts from the Neolithic period have been discovered on the European side of the city, and nearby remains from the slightly later Copper Age have been found. The remnants of a Phoenician settlement and the Greek city of Chalcedon are also to be seen on the Asian side of the Bosporus. Over the subsequent centuries, many great structures and important monuments were to be erected in these areas as the successor cities became the centers of first Orthodox and then Islamic culture.

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