On 11 May 330 Constantine dedicated a new capital on the Bosphorus. The city wasn't finished. Almost nothing of it survives. One column does, held together with iron bands.
He built on old Byzantion, with a new land wall about 2.5 km west of the old one that tripled the city. No trace of it has been found.
He laid out a round forum with a tall porphyry column at its centre, finished around 328. On top: a gigantic naked statue of the Sun, or Constantine himself, or both.
Was it "New Rome"? Depends who you ask. The historian Socrates, around 439, says Constantine decreed a "second Rome". A standard reference finds no evidence he used the title; coins of the 330s read "Constantinopolis". By 381 a church council used it in writing; the Patriarch of Constantinople carries it still.
He died in 337, plans probably unfinished.
The column kept going. In 1106 a gale blew the statue down (Anna Comnena is the source). A cross went up; the Ottomans took it down after 1453.
Then the bands. Nobody agrees on their date: Ottoman repairs around 1515, or after an earthquake in 416, 464 or 532. Evliya Çelebi, in the 17th century, wrote of 40 iron hoops, each as thick as a man's thigh. Hence the Turkish name: Çemberlitaş, "hooped stone".
And the "Burnt Column"? Not Constantine's doing: the great fire of 1779.
It stands at the Çemberlitaş stop on the T1 tram. Come early on a weekday, before the tram crowds, and find the bands. The insider move: skip the selfie with the traffic and follow Divan Yolu toward Hagia Sophia; the road still runs along the ancient Mese. A few steps away is Çemberlitaş Hamamı, from 1584: the hammam story. Restoration screens may be up; we couldn't confirm.
