AHC: Make Mount Athos into the Capital of New Constantinople

Your Challenge should you choose to accept it. Make Mount Athos into the Capital of New Constantinople and rebuild the empire from there.
 
Your Challenge should you choose to accept it. Make Mount Athos into the Capital of New Constantinople and rebuild the empire from there.

Errr... Constantinople was a city. How do you get someplace else to be a capital of a CITY?

I'm guessing you meant Byzantium (which IS a term (misused) for the whole empire)?
 

Dirk_Pitt

Banned
I doubt Mount Athos would work. It isn't exactly a viable location for a major city. What kind of PoD are you thinking of?

Maybe Athens?
 
I am thinking of Close to the point of 1453 and the fall of Constantinople of the lead in to the Hellenic revolution of 1821.
 
Very hard to have the Empire recover at that point from any location, much less a thin mountain peninsula populated by (male) monks with little defenses, natural resources or population.

Thessaloniki is somewhat close (not close enough for Mount Athos to be *part of* the city, but close enough for it to have some significant daily religious/political role in the governing of a country based out of that city; e.g a Quasi-theocracy with the Patriarch based at the holy mountain.).

That city has a fairly good prospect for being a capital; for much of Byzantine history it was the "second city" after Constantinople, and in the 14th century it was one of the larger cities around (100k+), being fairly prosperous. It doesn't have the best strategic location, being threatened by Serbs and Bulgars to the North, South Italians/Normans to the West and Turks to the East, but given the right PoD it can either be the capital of a Byzantine remnant (eg surviving Despotate of Epirus ) or alternatively the capital of a new Greek state in the event of an Ottoman collapse post 1453 (and it would need to be a collapse, the Ottomans presence in Rumelia is too strong at this time to be undone easily).
 
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