It's fascinating and impressive how many times Constantinople / Istanbul rose to the top and dropped right off the map only to rise back up to the top again. Really shows the historic importance and strategic geography of this unique city!
@@CroPETROforeverNBA I think he knows that Istanbul isnt Constantinople, what you dont seem to understand is that he meant that the same area that Istanbul occupies today is the same as Constantinople. So Campbells comment is correct, geography plays a significant role. Also if we want to be strict while also mentioning an Interesting fact Istanbul became the official name at 1930 so the video should label Istanbul as Constantinople before 1930. Istanbul was the nickname of the city until then.
Also, I find it strange that Constantinople is the only city that isn't represented with a modern national flag of the country it is in today. And calling it Istanbul from the reemergence on the list is constant (Yes, I just noticed that pun, but it was unintentional) with others, like St. Petersburg that never is called Petrograd or Leningrad over time. They seem to only go with what they are called now. I'm very skeptical "Durrington Walls" was called that 5500 years ago.
@@nickkounanos but under Ottoman rule it's name wasnt Constantinople either it name was Konstantiniye and u are right after 1930 become Istanbul which is name that called by folk not by rulers. and Crotian dude did u see Istanbul populations and now go check to Greece population.
@@CroPETROforeverNBA all nations and empires in the past were brutal and barbaric when they had enough power. don't cry here like a pathetic just because your country or your ancestors were literally used like a piece of toy by other empires in the past.
It is important to differentiate between metropolitan areas and cities. Paris has just over 2 million citizens, but its metropolitan area exceeds 12 million. Madrid has 3,305,408 citizens while its metropolitan area is just over 5 million and the province is close to 7 million. All the data are mixed.
@MarcT difference between definitive London (Greater London) and London Metropoliton area is relatively small compared to Paris and the city you named, but yeah the data used is clearly inconsistent between the two definitions
not really because some countries have very small citis but their metro is huge. like london citi has 30000 people when the metro area has more than 10 milion also athens the city has 600 000 people when metro has 3.5 milion
@@panosxgrx5117 “City of London” isn’t an example of metro vs city area, it’s a square mile, ancient district that takes up a chunk of Central London. It’s confusing given the name, but not a valid example in this context.
The thing is, Rome was kind of destroid and split in parts so... I think that the government of Rome these days couldn't hold their city together so the landparts that counted as Rome were not Rome anymore. The popularity wasn't as small, but the region they were counted was...
The year -5050: the 10th largest city in Europe is 17 people. The lack of data is very strong, I think it's not a unreasonable guess that at that time there be at least a few dozens (if not thousands) of settlements in Europe with 17 or more people.
Too Hip Hop is absolutely right . How can he possibly know that the population in 5050 BC was 17 ? It wouldn't even be clear that a certain year was 5050 BC ! That may seem strange, but the BC system wasn't established until centuries after Christ was born (it couldn't have been, could it ?). And nobody is really sure even now what year Christ was born, despite quite a bit of written evidence compared to most events, and a huge amount of interest. You only have to be a couple of years out with 5050 BC , and the population could easily have gone up to 20 or down to 14. Apart from anything else !
most of these data visualizations use extrapolations to fill in data from between two points in time. we couldn’t know for certain what the population was at exactly that date, so we make guesses based on dates that we do know. this is also apparent when rome’s population is falling. note the sudden change in rate of decline when the population hits 100,000.
Athens grew by a lot after the Anatolian Catastrophe. More than a million Greeks were genocided by the Turks and more than 1,2 million managed to get to Greece as refugees (hundreds of thousands more to other countries like the Soviet Union or Syria). Many of those refugees settled in Athens and so the city immediately jumped to more than a million people.
True, I feel like there’s an unspoken commonality with people living in Athens, our roots are always from a different part of Greece, making Athens the fusion of all different regions
It must've been fascinating to visit Rome in the Middle Ages. A city that was once inhabited by a million people only to lose a vast majority of its population. The ultimate tour of ruins.
Wow Constantinople held the title of the largest city the most persistently, dethroned by Paris and london for a few centuries, only to come back for a revenge as Istanbul :O
@@lilibra6224 I don’t know the situation well but once I heard Erdogan saying (to muslim people) “Go in Europe and do 4 kids each, in two or three generations Europe will be yours”. That’s the reason why, after the comment above, I supposed almost everyone in Turkey thinks good about that way. Glad to hear it isn’t true.
Much much respect for Thessaloniki ! This city is not any more widely known to Europeans, however it secured a place in the list for a considerable amount of time. It was founded after the fall of Alexander's empire, disappeared for a bit and became important again for many centuries during the byzantine empire as the co-capital behind Constantinopole.
Best Regards from Thessaloniki! It’s Greece’s co- capital today and second in Greece by population. The city has been continuously inhabited for about 2.300 years in its current location but much older if we count the settlements which are now located in the city’s suburbs.
@@Gyatt_frfr are you utterly delusional or just a troll? Judging from the "111!!" can't tell.. In the chance that you actually mean it, stop threatening our peace. We have a chance to cooperate in the framework of eu and both Greece and Bulgaria should make something good out of it.
Yay, Trier! My home town. Reached 90,000 people by about 300 AD and was (according to this video) the second largest city in Europe. Something must have gone wrong along the way because until today they only managed to get to 105,000 people 😅
The rise of Trier was when it was the capital of the Gallic empire. The downfall happened when the Franks (people from around the rhine river at that time) who were in control of Trier descided to conquer modernday France and make Paris its capital. So it isn't really that something went wrong.
I have not seen a dumber video on the Internet , there were no Ukrainian cities or villages until the 1900s . Because until 1300 all the lands from Poland to the Volga region were considered Russian . The land that was constantly conquered by the Russians, then the Poles, historically became independent just because of the unwillingness of either Poland or Russia to cede this territory to each other (the territory of today's Ukraine), so looking for Ukrainian villages in ancient times is like looking for photos of dinosaurs playing PlayStation.
@@user-muserf I don't care enough about Russia to look up whether you're right, but I kinda doubt it. Because there was no Russia nor any other modern nation in ancient times... so no difference
@@user-muserfthat's true for all cities stated here, roman, hellenic, slavic. So why do you dwell on the Ukrainian? It's just to illustrate where these cities are located. Or are you trying to say something else? Justification for current happenings in Ukraine maybe? By the way, one question: The kiever Rus, ancestors of russian imperialists, weren't they rather Ukrainians than Russians?
I think here's a bit of a mess up conflating cities, urban areas, metropolitan areas, regions, etc... For example, the London population shown is that of the city (as in municipality, not the City of London) itself, while for Paris it includes the Metro Area, as Paris as a city has between 2 and 3M. For Madrid and Barcelona you picked the whole province, etc. I don't know the criteria for the rest but that information is inaccurate. (Source: I'm one of the 3 million inhabitants of Madrid province/metro area that's not part of Madrid city)
Lisbon here also behaves pretty weirdly. In 1755 an earthquake killed up to a third of lisbon's population but here it just kept going up. I was expecting from 1755 for lisbon to just drop out of the list.
There is something quite wrong with this visualization: it seems to just be using simple linear extrapolation since it doesn't show some well-documented population declines. For instance, the black death (1347-52) hit cities particularly hard, and killed somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50% of the urban population of Europe. Some cities (e.g., Florence) had documented numbers above 70% mortality). Likewise, Leningrad (St. Petersburg) suffered a death toll between 1-5 million during ww2, but this is not reflected here. Still, despite this criticism, it was fun to watch!
It't totally unrealiscic video, the part before writing is simply fantasy (lie), but it's mostly unscientific all. Maybe looks good, but it's not true not real.
There were 30,000 deaths in Lisbon and the pop was 230,000 but because this was updated every 5 years it’s easy to understand why it didn’t decline as there was still population growth. It just slowed at that time
No, slavs really weren’t there. The video shows the Modern city names. The cities of todays south slavs were built on foundations made by older civilization such as illyrians, greeks, dacians and so on
I think a better way to display this info would be through an actual map of Europe and a circle around the city that grew and shrank w the population. Also, if the numbers at the top change it really kills the context of having those totals. If the graph just always stayed with around 1.5 mil as the max then you would really see the ebbs and flows and things like how small the cities were during the dark ages. Thanks!
@@ugurrr The estimation obviously comes mostly from excavation sites and less from recorded data. They simply didn't find larger cities in Europe during that era
@@DrDoomsd Maybe, but it's not as if the archaeological record is complete. It doesn't mean that a large city never existed just because it hasn't been dug up yet.
Back then in my heyday, I was a lecturer. I do recall a rather sweaty but diligent student who went by the name of Collins. This chap never raised the issue of the lack of AC during class, though. Back then folk just made do with what they had and didn't complain.
Constantinople/Istanbul is impressive since 450 till 2020, on top of the list on and off for almost 1600 yrs. Just crazy to see how important that city is…
As much as they try, they'll never rip out the Greek heart of that city. Hellenism is everywhere there, much to the dismay of its Turkish occupiers. (i.e. the Islamification of Hagia Sofia)
@@nicks.6341 My friend, this is now a Turkish city. Whether you accept it or not, calling the Turks occupiers in Istanbul today is nothing but ignorance.
@@kgyvaligenc6144 We will agree to disagree. The day is coming where Constantinople will no longer be a Turkish city. Remember these words and don't say you weren't warned.
@@georgios_5342 yep but Sicily has started been considered part of Italy in the 19th Century, that's why this misunderstanding. While Itsly was Magna Grecia Sicily was Sikelia (in greek). The eastern part with culturally Greek cities, the western part with phoenician cities (like Palermo)
@@Giorma.u en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Graecia literally the definition of Magna Graecia includes cities in Sicily. I know that Sicily is called Sikelia and Syracuse kids definitely a Greek city, it's even obvious in its name, which has an y Graecum
@@georgios_5342 yep Wikipedoa must be updated on this! I'm sicilian and I studied sicilian history at uni 😅 (the italian wiki is different on this topic btw)
I'm not as fascinated by the growth of the cities as I am by the shrinking. Rome had a million people living there in Roman times (guess this also shows why they were called Roman times), and then it shrunk back to 40.000 and less, it must've been like a ghost town. And then even before all that, imagine living in one of the largest towns, and there's only 50 other people.
London has some pretty interesting convulsions population falls from 9.5million to 7million in the later half of the 20th century and then ramps all the way back up in the 21st.
Those early southern Roman cities on this chart with the Italian flag, such as Syracuse (Sicily), should have the Greek flag associated to them. They were Greek cities/colonies and Sicily was Greek then (Magna Grecia).
странно, что у всех городов современные флаги тех государств в которых эти города сейчас географически расположены или располагались, но почему то напротив Константинополя нет флага Турции
@@noorna7123причём тут христиане и мусульмане? простая историческая несправедливость... Константинополь располагался на территории современной Турции и значит флаг должен быть турецкий или тогда переделывайте весь список.... Неаполь в 10 веке не имел никакого отношения к Италии и Риму это было отдельное независимое государство и так по каждому городу
Its okey bro. We own and embrace the geography we live in and everyone who lived here before us. We respect them very much. We do not like people who are not Turks and attribute everything to the religious war, but there is no problem, we have carried the whole legacy beautifully until today and we will carry it forever. Thank you for your objective perspective.
Except they didn't. At least those cities pre 3000 BCE weren't Greek. The first city listed is on Cyprus and Indo-Europeans didn't settle Europe anywhere close to that years. This channel is just a Greek circlejerk.
Yeah, I too expected to see big drops around the big wars but that didn't happen. All in all, still a fascinating exercise even though I think it might need some tighter controls on the data to get a truly accurante portrait. Nevertheless, it's still very insightful and gives much food for thought.
You can also see how Berlin steadily grows from 1 million in the 1880's to almost 4 million when in reality it only got to around 2 million because there wasn't any space left and then it jumped to 4 million when the Berlin metro area was incorporated into the city, including some big cities like Charlottenburg, Spandau or Rixdorf (Neukölln).
Our continent is truly amazing. With this presentation you can literally observe the very beginnings, the Greek domination, the Rome domination, basically Greco-Roman culture, present for centuries and centuries, then the disappearance of old world, Rome must have been as if we would as if we would imagine today abandoned NYC in ruins with simple housing and people beside grandiose ruin buildings. Both fascinating and scary how long it took old cities to recover, basically its only quite recent that happened, its mind blowing. We can learn from history, we are now at the point like Rome was, I really hope we last and really hope we are not equivalently in some “405 ad” atm. I cant even imagine another dark age, how would that even look like and when on earth would we get out of it again. So, lets just love each other, i know we probably getting on each others nerves, everything seems like it’s escalating, but lets be tolerant,lets try not to vote for extreme parties (we know already that it never evolves into a good thing) and just have respect for everyone and we should be ok. 🙏 😅
I'm so glad italys populati9n will be 54 million by 2050. 2100 will habe 48 million and nigerial will have 300 million. All the mixed race and babies. So glad finally
I have not seen a dumber video on the Internet , there were no Ukrainian cities or villages until the 1900s . Because until 1300 all the lands from Poland to the Volga region were considered Russian . The land that was constantly conquered by the Russians, then the Poles, historically became independent just because of the unwillingness of either Poland or Russia to cede this territory to each other (the territory of today's Ukraine), so looking for Ukrainian villages in ancient times is like looking for photos of dinosaurs playing PlayStation.
It took 1700 years for London to reach a million inhabitants in Europe after Rome did in 100 AD. Goes to show how immeasurably magnificent and grandiose Rome truly was for its era. But what's still crazy is that London reached a million inhabitants sometime just around the early 1800s and by 1865 it was 3 million! And by the end of the century it was at 6.5 million! That's insane!
Industrialisation and immigration, yes, causing rapid increase... but also the way the city expanded naturally to include the surrounding areas, which were previously counted as separate satellite towns and then went on to become London boroughs. All of that happened very suddenly once the new bridges connected the lands south of the Thames (which weren't counted as "London" before). So it's not like there were suddenly 6.5M people. Many of them were already there but just being counted differently.
1st place Rome: 270 B.C.-450 A.D. (720 years) 1st place New Rome/Constantinople: 450-995 (545 years) 1.030-1.260 (230 years) as Istanbul: 1.490-1.720 (230 years) 2.005-2.020 (15 years) Total: 1.020 years
@@LiveYourLifeWithJoy binlerce yıllık Tarihi olan istanbulda yaşamaktan gurur duyuyorum . Evet belki fazla nufusu var . İstanbul için gururlanmamak nufusun çok olmasına engel değil . Yaşamayan bilemez istanbulu
According to this video, St. Petersburg (Leningrad) population didn't change during the the blockade in 1941-44. It did. From approximately 3 millions to 550 thousands.
@@imperium_vox The entertainment largely comes from the purported accuracy of the numbers, otherwise it's about as entertaining as those videos made for babies, just colors and movement with a little tune in the background.
What one also has to consider is the population density these numbers imply. Take Metro-Paris for example with around 11 million people: this is like more than one sixth of the whole French population clustered in one place. A similar scenario is true for London or Madrid. This also implies that most of the economic power is centralized as well, leaving many other regions in the respective country underdeveloped. In Germany, the situation is different. Here the population is much more spread throughout the whole country due to its federal structure (and of course historic reasons). Berlin accounts just for approximately 4% of the German population. Of course there are regional differences as well, but they are less pronounced. I think it's really interesting to see that these simple numbers tell us so much more about a country as a whole :D
Very interesting, just one point: It does not show a reduction of the population during the plague. In 1665 to 1666 in London alone, it is estimated that around 100,000 people died of the plague and many more left London for rural areas to escape it. Also 1666 was the Great Fire of London where many more moved away because so much of the city was in ruins.
It also shows the Black Death as being a gradual event that took around 40 years when in reality most of the deaths happened in a five year span. The software that was used probably extrapolates data between data points that are far apart, so you don’t see these kinds of events
@@BenjaminIMeszaros you dont know what are you talking about, Rome had a system of sewers and aqueducts and the roads were built as in modern cities the baths were open to all, and many people had water directly at home, in medicine they had antibiotic, antibacterial anesthesia, and surgical instruments similar to modern ones, a similar result was not achieved until 1800
The amount of poor people/slaves was big too. You could store many in a cabin with ease, tho slaves back then were often treated way better than average poor romans. Many were a symbol of status, even to mere citizens.
I wish it was a bit easier to read the names of the cities. While Constantinople was out having a comparatively massive population, half ofthe other city names on the list were pushed out of the shot to the point of being illegible. It's really interesting data, and I like seeing it visualized like this, so it was kind of a bummer to lose all of those.
I agree 100%. I appreciate the effort put in to make a video such as this, yet in the first half of it it's extremely difficult to make out the names especially if the ancient cities are unknown to the viewer.
Ещё реальная ржака - древние сёла под украинским флагом 😂 Во-первых, таких данных не существует и, видимо, идиот делавший видео повелся на укропских псевдоисториков, во-вторых, выбор флага исходя из нынешнего административного подчинения более чем сомнителен
You really start to understand the magnitude of the events of the time when you notice that the only period in the last few hundred years major cities like London, Berlin, St. Petersburg, etc stopped headlong exponential growth and in fact started to de-populate was right around 1935-1945.
Turkey is pretty misogynistic and women are still viewed as baby machines. Their president, Erdogan, has stated awful views on womanhood and Turkish people still vote for him because apparently he represents the average Turkish person's beliefs. Result: Even nowadays, average child per woman is 4.1, one of the highest in Europe (if not the highest). Hence, the insane rise. Istanbul's growth is literally the result of controlling women and their bodies.
@@PickledShark I might be wrong or inaccurate in some way because I have very little knowledge of the Romans in Britain but were cities like Colchester or whatever it’s called also the capital for a short period of time
Va beh stai parlando di Londra, praticamente quando Roma governava il mondo probabilmente gli abitanti di Londra vestivano con pellicce e cacciavano scoiattoli.
Ancient Greece: The larger the theater, the larger the population.🙂 Somehow I miss the Scandinavians. Didn't they document their population growth? Constantinople has only been officially called Istanbul since the 1930s, I think. That's fine too, thank you.
Yes well realisticly Constantinopolis was just rome moved and given another name, all political people and supporters moved, wealthy moved, poor moved for easier life etc
Rome's steady and rapid population decline started on the year 350 mark, around the same time that Constantinople experienced a surge in numbers, although it took 100 more years for Constantinople to displace Rome in the Number 1 spot. This is primarily due to Constantinople becoming the new permanent capital of the Roman Empire, although there are other factors like civil wars (Crisis of the Third Century and the wars of the Tetrarchy) and Emperors staying far away from Rome when on lengthy campaigns against barbarians. Constantinople held the Top 1 spot from 450 to 1265, with a brief interruption by Córdoba from 995-1025 due to the latter being a political and commercial center in Spain. Take note that Constantinople's population decline itself started around the 1205 mark, just a year after the Fourth Crusade sacked the city, and Paris eventually took the Top 1 place on 1265, four years after the Eastern Romans retook the city. By this time the ERE had been reduced to just Greece and portions of western Anatolia
Also, Rome's decline happened around then because that's when it started to really become apparent that it wasnt in a secure, defensible location and that was beginning to matter more than ever. It was also becoming increasingly hard to provide for a city of that size in that location when its countryside was frequently subject to raids (hence why it started becoming utterly dependent on Africa's grain supply, which the Vandals would later take control of)
I think it's also interesting to note that it took 1500 years for another European city (London) to reach the 1 million mark after Rome's population declined so heavily.
But as usual it's not taken so serious with accuracy in respresenting the history. Never believe the history unless u didnt create it (a wise man said)😉
3:10 7th century BC Syracuse🇬🇷 was not Italian but a Greek (Magna Grecia) city. Birthplace of Greek mathematician Archimedes The same goes for all the towns in South Italy (aka Magna Grecia) From Neapolis (Napoli) downwards: Agrigento, Taranto etc
@@lr7694_ You compare 4-5 years of Nazi occupation with hundreds of years (more than 10 centuries) Greeks living and establishing cities in Magna Grecia? We are talking about Greek cities which were founded by Greeks. I'm a historian ikr 👍
It's quite impressive that Greece - a very small country in the world today counting 2022 - was consistently in the Top 5 for nearly 7 Millenia! That's just crazy!
Well, it was the case in Europe. East Asian, Middle East, North Aftrica had much larger citities then Europe's. Also, I think (?), the main reason Greece had big cities, mostly because the trading happened between the Middle Eastern/North African cities and Greece (just my thoughts, may not have the reality).
Because the rest of Europe did farming in spread out villages but Greeks did trading so they founded cities and lived closer. Thats why after the Romans fell, Western European cities lost population. Because the people went back to the farmlands and villages and could actually live easier because they werent forced into cities and starved by the Romans. After West Rome fell, West European living standards rised almost to the level of prosperous Chinese cities of the time.
It's interesting to see how a few ukrainian and balkans settlements were so heavily populated during the neolithic. The cucuteni-trypilla culture and the vinca culture deserve some love
@@bike-cave-man2527 Russia has nothing to do with the Balkan peninsula, and is newer than most of the countries there. If Kievan Rus is what you meant, its territories never passed Danube river.
@@momentary_ For real. Cities really do not take up that much land in the scheme of things. Drive through the U.S. and you will see that the vast majority of it is empty/farmland. Of course that doesn't mean that humans aren't negatively impacting the environment in a lot of other ways
Always remembered this passage from Will Durant's "The Life of Greece" about Sybaris, once the richest city in antiquity: All went well with Sybaris until it slipped into war with its neighbor Crotona (510). We are unreliably informed that the Sybarites marched out to battle with an army of 300,000 men. The Crotonians, we are further assured, threw this force into confusion by playing the tunes to which the Sybarites had taught their horses to dance. The horses danced, the Sybarites were slaughtered, and their city was so conscientiously sacked and burned that it disappeared from history in a day."
I can't believe my island, Ischia, which was a Greek colony in southern Italy, is in the list between 2:28 and 3:08. It's a tiny island near Naples that's inhabited by 60,000 people today and got to 7,500 before getting out of the list in 690 BC. I'm from there and I had no fuckin' idea we were so important at that time 😆
@Chizzel Wizzel yeah, surely the fact I didn't know my island was the n.9 largest city in Europe 3000 years ago means I never read books... as if every book in the world mentioned that information. Maybe you should read less and think more.
In 3045, a New Yorker will says "I had no ideas, my little city was so important in 21th century. Now the powerful city is EMC Elon Musk City on Jupiter" 😂
Nice video. Rome's decline in Late Antiquity is bit too early. Theoderic's Rome (490s-520s) was probably about 500000 by modern estimates. Rome's real dip in population was only during the Gothic wars (535-550s). But that is just a detail.
Thank you for your great effort. But if you may allow me, I see a contradiction here! When the cities like Cordoba, Sevilla and Granada appeared you used the Spanish flag which means your criteria is the present-day situation, while you used the Byzantine flag that no longer exists for Constantinople and same city appeared with Turkish flag when it was renamed as Istanbul.
It’s interesting to see each country taking the lead throughout the times… Of course this is just agglomeration it does not take into account other entry otherwise I think it might have been very different in some periods… Oh and, we need to talk more about Paris, they stayed at the top for soooo long and kept rising even during the 100years war… it’s impressive considering that and also aaaalll the epidemic the Europe went through.
I have not seen a dumber video on the Internet , there were no Ukrainian cities or villages until the 1900s . Because until 1300 all the lands from Poland to the Volga region were considered Russian . The land that was constantly conquered by the Russians, then the Poles, historically became independent just because of the unwillingness of either Poland or Russia to cede this territory to each other (the territory of today's Ukraine), so looking for Ukrainian villages in ancient times is like looking for photos of dinosaurs playing PlayStation.
What surprises me the most is how insignificant Rome was for most of the last millennium. I didn't think Rome was ever a small city, but it really didn't have a resurgence until after WWI.
It's basically because it was repopulated after 1870, when it was conquered from the Pope and made capital of the Kingdom of Italy. The choice of making it capital (Turin and Florence were temporary capitals after unification, despite Naples being the biggest city) was made explicitly because of the great historical legacy, even if it was a relatively small city before that.
Small but it still kept its fundamental role of capital of christianity. I say this as an atheist, I noticed that nowadays people don't really realize how impacting was the Pope and how strongly tied Rome was to its role. It might not have figured in this chart for a thousand years, but its power was dramatic
Moscow has 13mil im city limits but 18mil in urban area, Istanbul has 15.5mil in city limita but 15.8mil in urban area, Paris has 2.3mil in city limits but 11mil in urban area…so these stats are not accurate if you consider city limits for one city and urban limits for another. Unlike the US, in Europe we don’t have city, urban and metro areas standardised, they are different from country to country.
if you count urban areas istanbul would likely to have 20m+ people even now it has 16m turkish citizens in city and it probabily has more than a half million refugees and other people
Yeah the City of London only has 10,000 people living in it! 9 million in what most people generally call London and 13-15 in the wider metropolitan area.
The urban area (that the building continuity you expect in a city) gets often mixed up with the more modern concept of "Metropolitan Area", that is an area connected by modern transportation, services and economic ties that can also include mere villages. If you take metropolitan areas Paris and London are both around 14.5M, Istanbul at 15.5 (but half of it is in Asia) and Moscow at 20M. Also to be even fairer the german Ruhr Metropolitan Area of 10M should be ranked. So the ranking should be as follows #1 Moscow #2 Paris #3 London #4 Ruhr #5 european Istanbul
Correct. Madrid is 3m for the Municipality but 7m for the metropolitan area. I think metro areas should be taken into account in all cases. The massive Madrid’s surrounding municipalities accounting for more population than in the city would not exist as such without the main city.
Very informative and very impressive video. Just a small correction, Constantinople kept the original name Constantinople even after the 1400's, ... up to 20th Century.. Only in 1930 the name changed to Instabul. Actually , even the current name Instabul is a street pronunciation of the colloquial Greek expression "IsTanPoli", that its proud inhabitants called it when referring to the "Poli" or "Queen of Cities" as it was known for more than a Thousand years.
To all of you Greek simpletons out there still thinking you own the place: The city existed far before your ancestors even evolved any common language (PIE) ca. 8000 BCE, let alone colonizing Anatolia and İstanbul. Lyg-s was the original Thracian name.
@Rat Rat No absolutely not. The name shifted from Constantinople to Istambul following Atatürk's reforms in the 1920. As the founder of the Republic of Turkey, a secular state, he surely wouldn't have supported the renaming of the city to such a religious name. He was a Turk before being a Muslim. Besides that, the hypothetical evolution from "Islambul" to "Istanbul" makes no sense, comparing to the evolution from "IsTanPoli" to "Istanbul".
@@costenics_sw or eis tan poli(polin) means to the city it is not greek language it is helen language so you are right btw first time i see a greek person knows this information everybody thought we change the city name to turkish but actually we use the oldest name of the city
should have had a different flag for that time period though:) Btw I love Cordoba, one of my favourite places I've ever visited. You live in a very beautiful city!
OK, I really do appreciate this video and all the effort that went into it. The figures are a bit hard to understand though. According to Wikipedia the population of Paris fell to about 100,000 by the year 1422 (as a result of the Plague and the civil war) and reached 150,000 again by the year 1500. You put the figure for Paris close to 215,000 around the year 1422. The city of Ghent, estimated at around 55,000 in the year 1500 is stated as 149,190, nearly 3 times that figure. Britannica mentions that Paris reached the 1 million inhabitants mark by 1870. That just half of the 2 million mentioned by you. And so on.
@@thecha4570 This probably refers to the entire urban area of Paris, all suburbs included. If the same area was used to calculate the population in 1422 the figure stated in the video would probably be right. The video description does mention "agglomeration". I can only assume that the present-day borders (incl. suburbs) have been used and projected back in time. Paris in the middle ages, despite very clearly defined outer walls, would not be just that area in this video, but Paris + villages/towns outside the city walls. People who lived outside the walls would not have been considered Parisian by any means, but I understand the necessity to add them nonetheless in order to make the geographical area coincide with the present borders.
@@leonidasblue3973 That's possible, but the current suburbs of Ghent were mainly marsh or farmland back in 1500. Perhaps the author can enlighten us by explaining the figure.
Wow, changed my realization of how big cities are in Europe. I knew Istanbul was big but even being there briefly I didn't realize it's a city of 16 million people. I just assumed the largest city today in Europe was either Paris or London with Moscow or Rome at third place or maybe a city in Spain.
I found it super interesting. One note, you have counted the metropolitan areas as a very big thing, at least in Barcelona or Madrid, you have counted its entire region, 311 municipalities in Barcelona instead of the 36 that make up its urban area. I also found it amazing when I saw Athens go from 400,000 inhabitants to only 40,000 in just 380 years. But then I saw Rome go from a million inhabitants to 50,000 inhabitants in 560 years and I was even more surprised. I thought cities maintained their population better over time (at least cities haven't lost population for a long time now)… I also liked to know how many inhabitants the cities had when they decided to inaugurate their metro services (of course you considered an area much larger than the urban area of the city itself). London 1863: 2.93 million Paris 1900: 3.34 million Berlin: 1902: 2.83 million
both rome and athens were dependent for their size on the concentration of resources of the empires they were at the centers of. so when they loose the connection to those empires, they crumble rapidly since they cannot feed their own populations and people flee
I have not seen a dumber video on the Internet , there were no Ukrainian cities or villages until the 1900s . Because until 1300 all the lands from Poland to the Volga region were considered Russian . The land that was constantly conquered by the Russians, then the Poles, historically became independent just because of the unwillingness of either Poland or Russia to cede this territory to each other (the territory of today's Ukraine), so looking for Ukrainian villages in ancient times is like looking for photos of dinosaurs playing PlayStation.
Your note is incorrect. It's not about the area, it's about the density. Spain tends to micro-separate his cities in tiny municipalities, so the cities tend to show a lower population than what they really had. The video is correct.
@@FranciscoJG Madrid as we know it was founded by Muslims (aside from some Roman evidences in several locations), should it appear in the video with a flag which isn't Spain's? I don't know if you get my point. I understand what you mean, but it's trying to make a simple question too complex. And it's not a casuality that there're several comments of Greek guys commenting this very same detail. It's ok being proud of your history, but many Greeks whom I have run into in the internet are obsessed with these kind of things, as if there was a secret conspiracy against Greece. And this comes from a guy who's totally in love with Greece.
Those names of towns in Ukraine in the beginning - is names of nearby modern villages that are closest to the archeological sites.Trypillya culture is quite mysterious.
Italy has quite the staying power. She never dropped out of the rankings from 1800 BC to today. That's about 3,800 years of being at the top of the urban race here. Good for Italy!
Greece has dominated the vast amount of history by thousands of years. Even in medieval times the Greek byzantine cities of Constantinople and Thessaloniki were high on top
Nope..today Greeks is mix of some ortadox people live in region . With same logic Illyrians and Republic citizen (Turks and cousins ) too can "proud " about it
@@Üstad_15 says a nobody with fantasy far from the truth. Turks originate from Mongolia 1100AD, 900 years ago, 6000 km away from the Mediterranean, where the whole of Turkey is Greek of origin with thousands of years of Greek civilization far far before any Turkic forefather even came into existence in their native homelands of Mongolia Anyone can Google ANY city in Turkey to see its origins being Greek. Also. Albanians are not Greek. They are the descendants of the Illyrians, a non Greek people above the Greek world. For further world history education I advise you to do a 1 minute search of this time period of the ancient Greek world and the non Greek tribes of the Northern Balkans, loke the Paeonians, Illyrians and so on. Now scram, and educate yourself
@@mariusstan352 Wrong. The ultimate origin of Turkic people are in Mongolia and actually so far up North East Russia today. The very recorded historic evidences of the very first proto Turkic people in existence dates back from 200 BCE by Chinese acounts. The Turkic people at that time lived Around Mongolia and Altai mountain area. Hence their language being part of the Altai language tree.
for me, as a czech living in Praga, it's wonderful seeing her make it to the board. It makes perfect sense, also, from historical point of view. In 14th century, Charles IV. ruled Holy Roman Empire and Czech lands (Bohemia, Morava). In that time, he made Praga main city of the Empire and lived there. That's the moment, Praga enters the chat. His son did live here too, but then the hussite wars plundered Czechia. It's interesting to see, that during the wars, Praga was at it's best. Wars ended in 1434. Then the population starts to drop and I'm not sure why. Anyway, the next ruler, who moved to Praga in the Holy Roman Empire, was Rudolf II. He made the city a haven for alchemists and artists from all over Europe. That was the little comeback in 1590 on the board:D
Massillia (Marseille) was one of the most important city above Greek Empire, one of the most powerful west harbor of the mediterranean sea. It miss also Carthage if i am not wrong
It took until 1810 for Europe to have another city of 1 million people after Rome. Makes you think how huge Rome really was, considering there were a lot less people in Europe overall back then.
It's interesting how the population count of the capitals of nations or regional power centres quite accurately reflect the relative power leves of the nations at every time in history. edit: even if the data has its limits, all data always has
Usually, yes. But then comes Warsaw... I was sorta expecting to see it on the list sometime in the 17th-18th century, meanwhile it pops up for a brief moment on the break of 19th/20th :D
As someone from Spain, the notion that Cordoba surpassed Constantinople in population and was the largest city in Europe for some solid years, it's absolutely wild
It was the largest and most civilized city at one point in the 10th century Moreover I feel like the numbers in this video is faulty. Cordoba had at least 1 million inhabitants by the late 900s in most sources
People just moved to the centre ( Madrid, Toledo, Valladolid) or to the coast. Like every Spaniard have been doing in the last 700 years if they have the chance.
I would like to correct a mistake; The name of the city of Constantinople remained as Constantinopol after the Ottomans conquered it. After 1928, the name of the city was changed as a result of attempts to make the world forget its importance by the pressures of the west after the collapse of the Ottoman. It was not called Istanbul during the Ottoman period. The Ottomans did not change the name of the conquered lands, did not interfere with the freedom of language and belief of the people. They only transformed strategic structures into mosques as the symbol of domination of Islam. So after 1453, the flag should have changed, but the name of the city should have remained the same ;)
every other city has the modern country flag and english name. Medieval Cordoba has the Spain flag... By that logic Constantinople should have Turkey's flag and be called Istanbul for the whole video.
@@antunatomasan here something else has been shown and emphasized...the ottoman empire did not interfere in the culture, religion, language and living habits of the conquered territories and they even did not this for the original names of the conquered cities!....although they conquered these areas they did show unpredecented tolerance towards all people....for example greece was for 400 years territory of the ottoman empire.....but greek people never have converted to islam....and greeks have always spoken their own language and never turkish....this kind of tolerance is something very unusual, especially for that time....and so even the name of constantinople remained the same until 1928....these are facts.....
Constantinople was the city, where a Christian Europe began. There the Roman law has been codificated, which is still the base of all European law systems. In the region of Constantinople Christianity was transformed from a sect into a state religion. Exotic Asian? New Rome was for centuries the centre of the European civilization.
This video was a good comparison but I would like to point out that you used modern flags for most of these cities but for constantinople you used the byzantine empire. Else then that pretty good!
As i understood, most cities flags and names are taken as they are now. Kiyv, for example have Ukraine flag, but no Ukraine was then. Also, Sarai, marked as russian, also really was not russian city then.
@@Bezzarder Rus used the same flag Ukraine is using nowadays. But in general video is using flags of the states on which territories city is/was located. With few exceptions. For example Feodosia is Ukrainian city, but they decided to use flag of RF
Very nice and interesting video! Most interesting for me were the rises of Rome (1st city with 1 million inhabitants at 70 AC) and Istanbul at the end!
Just looking at the numbers, you can understand or remember what happened historically, following migration patterns. By the way it took 1600 years to replicate 1M Metropolitan population in Rome for London. Numbers are always so important to look and analyse, they explain reality.
100% correct. important to note that in recent times major local wars led by the us have been fought in the countries where the oldest settlements in the world are located, iraq and ukraine :D
How anybody can believe we have enough data to figure out the population's evoultion of cities in ancient Greece and Rome by the scale of a decade and precission of units?
Rome was impressive it took 1700 years till another city was able to reach a million citizens again.
Rome was 50% of the world at that time
Barbarian invasions
@@jollybegood What are you even trying to say?
@@bujardoci7347 nah not 50%.
China alone had about 50 - 60m people in that time.
Rome was just so op
It's fascinating and impressive how many times Constantinople / Istanbul rose to the top and dropped right off the map only to rise back up to the top again. Really shows the historic importance and strategic geography of this unique city!
@@CroPETROforeverNBA I think he knows that Istanbul isnt Constantinople, what you dont seem to understand is that he meant that the same area that Istanbul occupies today is the same as Constantinople. So Campbells comment is correct, geography plays a significant role.
Also if we want to be strict while also mentioning an Interesting fact Istanbul became the official name at 1930 so the video should label Istanbul as Constantinople before 1930. Istanbul was the nickname of the city until then.
Also, I find it strange that Constantinople is the only city that isn't represented with a modern national flag of the country it is in today.
And calling it Istanbul from the reemergence on the list is constant (Yes, I just noticed that pun, but it was unintentional) with others, like St. Petersburg that never is called Petrograd or Leningrad over time. They seem to only go with what they are called now. I'm very skeptical "Durrington Walls" was called that 5500 years ago.
@@nickkounanos but under Ottoman rule it's name wasnt Constantinople either it name was Konstantiniye and u are right after 1930 become Istanbul which is name that called by folk not by rulers. and Crotian dude did u see Istanbul populations and now go check to Greece population.
@@CroPETROforeverNBA all nations and empires in the past were brutal and barbaric when they had enough power. don't cry here like a pathetic just because your country or your ancestors were literally used like a piece of toy by other empires in the past.
@@CroPETROforeverNBA Easy, dog. When Turks entered city, citizens' dream came true. They finally relieved. And they'll belong to Turkey forever 😉
It is important to differentiate between metropolitan areas and cities. Paris has just over 2 million citizens, but its metropolitan area exceeds 12 million. Madrid has 3,305,408 citizens while its metropolitan area is just over 5 million and the province is close to 7 million. All the data are mixed.
Exactly. Bucharest alone has 2m, but it's metropolitan area has only 2.5m, so this city should have been on the list
@MarcT difference between definitive London (Greater London) and London Metropoliton area is relatively small compared to Paris and the city you named, but yeah the data used is clearly inconsistent between the two definitions
Yeah that's right many people mistake this two words
not really because some countries have very small citis but their metro is huge. like london citi has 30000 people when the metro area has more than 10 milion also athens the city has 600 000 people when metro has 3.5 milion
@@panosxgrx5117 “City of London” isn’t an example of metro vs city area, it’s a square mile, ancient district that takes up a chunk of Central London. It’s confusing given the name, but not a valid example in this context.
The funniest things are today's flags of countries in cities from thousands of years ago.
And what flags must be for those cities 5-6 thousands years ago?
Oh yea. And slavic names of cities, while Slavs actually didn't exist. Amazing power of Indo-Europians
@@Чуни-муниdo you also trust to current version of the history?
@@Чуни-муни
I dont trust this version. But I dont know what is correct as the winners burned all remainings
Only HELLENIANS could do that!
Can yall imagine what a ghost town most of rome would have been after its population reduced from a million to 100 thousand in like 100 years
More or less like Detroit?
@@adamcarrillo209 way worse...
The thing is, Rome was kind of destroid and split in parts so...
I think that the government of Rome these days couldn't hold their city together so the landparts that counted as Rome were not Rome anymore.
The popularity wasn't as small, but the region they were counted was...
I wasnt a town, it was half europe and northern africa
Fynn no this is just referring to the city. The entire empire had 100s of millions of people in it.
The year -5050: the 10th largest city in Europe is 17 people. The lack of data is very strong, I think it's not a unreasonable guess that at that time there be at least a few dozens (if not thousands) of settlements in Europe with 17 or more people.
Understanable error methink, there isn't even any homo sapiens in my island back then
These are probably known "cities" . I am sure there are plenty of other larger cities, but they need evidence to archeological evidence support it.
its a miracle, remain every 10. years data to this youtuber from - 1200
Too Hip Hop is absolutely right . How can he possibly know that the population in 5050 BC was 17 ? It wouldn't even be clear that a certain year was 5050 BC ! That may seem strange, but the BC system wasn't established until centuries after Christ was born (it couldn't have been, could it ?). And nobody is really sure even now what year Christ was born, despite quite a bit of written evidence compared to most events, and a huge amount of interest. You only have to be a couple of years out with 5050 BC , and the population could easily have gone up to 20 or down to 14. Apart from anything else !
most of these data visualizations use extrapolations to fill in data from between two points in time. we couldn’t know for certain what the population was at exactly that date, so we make guesses based on dates that we do know. this is also apparent when rome’s population is falling. note the sudden change in rate of decline when the population hits 100,000.
Athens has made a massive comeback . It went from almost 400,000 in ancient times to just about 8000 in the early 1800’s, now at almost 4 million
The sudden massive expansion really shows in the city
Athens grew by a lot after the Anatolian Catastrophe. More than a million Greeks were genocided by the Turks and more than 1,2 million managed to get to Greece as refugees (hundreds of thousands more to other countries like the Soviet Union or Syria). Many of those refugees settled in Athens and so the city immediately jumped to more than a million people.
@@georgios_5342 yeah turk killed 20 million greek
True, I feel like there’s an unspoken commonality with people living in Athens, our roots are always from a different part of Greece, making Athens the fusion of all different regions
the whole West is the fruit of Greek and Roman culture
Istanbul just goes "excuse me, boys" the whole last minute.
It must've been fascinating to visit Rome in the Middle Ages. A city that was once inhabited by a million people only to lose a vast majority of its population. The ultimate tour of ruins.
There are several Romantic painters that went to rome to paint the ruins, Hubert Robert for example.
I've thought the same myself. Not just alot smaller;
Kinda like Detroit.
@@mikeanderson2956 xDDDD
turkey is not Europe...get it right kid. There is no istanbul, just occupied Constantinople
Wow Constantinople held the title of the largest city the most persistently, dethroned by Paris and london for a few centuries, only to come back for a revenge as Istanbul :O
Maybe in the past it did sense, but today having a population that has so many children is degenerative and dumb
@@lucciocalappa no avarage kid per woman is 1.88 in turkey but in Istanbul there are so many afghans syrians etc learn before judging 😉
@@lilibra6224 and you consider it something to be proud of? That was what i meant
@@lucciocalappa nah but that aint the turks reason are arabs afghans etc
@@lilibra6224 I don’t know the situation well but once I heard Erdogan saying (to muslim people) “Go in Europe and do 4 kids each, in two or three generations Europe will be yours”.
That’s the reason why, after the comment above, I supposed almost everyone in Turkey thinks good about that way.
Glad to hear it isn’t true.
Much much respect for Thessaloniki ! This city is not any more widely known to Europeans, however it secured a place in the list for a considerable amount of time. It was founded after the fall of Alexander's empire, disappeared for a bit and became important again for many centuries during the byzantine empire as the co-capital behind Constantinopole.
Best Regards from Thessaloniki! It’s Greece’s co- capital today and second in Greece by population. The city has been continuously inhabited for about 2.300 years in its current location but much older if we count the settlements which are now located in the city’s suburbs.
Reject Thessaloniki, embrace Salunj !!!
Long live Bulgaria! Remember 1015 and wait for the revenge111!!!!1
Well, I played assasins creed.
@@Gyatt_frfr are you utterly delusional or just a troll? Judging from the "111!!" can't tell.. In the chance that you actually mean it, stop threatening our peace. We have a chance to cooperate in the framework of eu and both Greece and Bulgaria should make something good out of it.
@@sarantis1995 He is a Troll Saranti, he has it in his name
Yay, Trier! My home town. Reached 90,000 people by about 300 AD and was (according to this video) the second largest city in Europe. Something must have gone wrong along the way because until today they only managed to get to 105,000 people 😅
Plague, couple of words wars...
The rise of Trier was when it was the capital of the Gallic empire. The downfall happened when the Franks (people from around the rhine river at that time) who were in control of Trier descided to conquer modernday France and make Paris its capital.
So it isn't really that something went wrong.
I have not seen a dumber video on the Internet , there were no Ukrainian cities or villages until the 1900s . Because until 1300 all the lands from Poland to the Volga region were considered Russian . The land that was constantly conquered by the Russians, then the Poles, historically became independent just because of the unwillingness of either Poland or Russia to cede this territory to each other (the territory of today's Ukraine), so looking for Ukrainian villages in ancient times is like looking for photos of dinosaurs playing PlayStation.
@@user-muserf I don't care enough about Russia to look up whether you're right, but I kinda doubt it. Because there was no Russia nor any other modern nation in ancient times... so no difference
@@user-muserfthat's true for all cities stated here, roman, hellenic, slavic. So why do you dwell on the Ukrainian? It's just to illustrate where these cities are located. Or are you trying to say something else? Justification for current happenings in Ukraine maybe?
By the way, one question: The kiever Rus, ancestors of russian imperialists, weren't they rather Ukrainians than Russians?
I think here's a bit of a mess up conflating cities, urban areas, metropolitan areas, regions, etc... For example, the London population shown is that of the city (as in municipality, not the City of London) itself, while for Paris it includes the Metro Area, as Paris as a city has between 2 and 3M. For Madrid and Barcelona you picked the whole province, etc. I don't know the criteria for the rest but that information is inaccurate. (Source: I'm one of the 3 million inhabitants of Madrid province/metro area that's not part of Madrid city)
Lisbon here also behaves pretty weirdly. In 1755 an earthquake killed up to a third of lisbon's population but here it just kept going up. I was expecting from 1755 for lisbon to just drop out of the list.
Milano as well...
Mucho betis y mucho madri ompare
Also the bubonic plague didn’t seem to really impact the cities
I mean Berlin between 1945 and 1990 is on the list, in a time where it was two cities. It’s very inaccurate
There is something quite wrong with this visualization: it seems to just be using simple linear extrapolation since it doesn't show some well-documented population declines. For instance, the black death (1347-52) hit cities particularly hard, and killed somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50% of the urban population of Europe. Some cities (e.g., Florence) had documented numbers above 70% mortality). Likewise, Leningrad (St. Petersburg) suffered a death toll between 1-5 million during ww2, but this is not reflected here. Still, despite this criticism, it was fun to watch!
nerd
Also like Athens in 500-400 where it was the Plague of Athens and the Peloponnesian War.
And the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which destroyed the city
It't totally unrealiscic video, the part before writing is simply fantasy (lie), but it's mostly unscientific all. Maybe looks good, but it's not true not real.
There were 30,000 deaths in Lisbon and the pop was 230,000 but because this was updated every 5 years it’s easy to understand why it didn’t decline as there was still population growth. It just slowed at that time
So pretty much everything started in The Balkans
Yea ^^
@@matejbukovac4926 You mean native to Europe.
@@matejbukovac4926 its just a geographic location of those cities ur seeing on the vidio
Mostly Greece
No, slavs really weren’t there. The video shows the Modern city names. The cities of todays south slavs were built on foundations made by older civilization such as illyrians, greeks, dacians and so on
I think a better way to display this info would be through an actual map of Europe and a circle around the city that grew and shrank w the population.
Also, if the numbers at the top change it really kills the context of having those totals. If the graph just always stayed with around 1.5 mil as the max then you would really see the ebbs and flows and things like how small the cities were during the dark ages.
Thanks!
At one point around 2,000 BC, all top 10 cities in Europe were Greek.
because they were recorded and others werent
@@ugurrr true,but also that shows how farther ahead they were at that time.
@@wakeno.6047 and their ego killed the trend
@@ugurrr The estimation obviously comes mostly from excavation sites and less from recorded data. They simply didn't find larger cities in Europe during that era
@@DrDoomsd Maybe, but it's not as if the archaeological record is complete. It doesn't mean that a large city never existed just because it hasn't been dug up yet.
Rome, Mediolanum (Milan), Athens. They all returned to the top of the list after 2000 years. Incredible.
While Aquileia (5.01 one of the greates roman cities) is now a little village with no more than 3000 inhabitants. But it still has many roman finds.
@@Ilsindacodicooperville That's absolutely mad...
What a comeback! (In football terms)
@@Ilsindacodicooperville and don’t get me started on Sparta.
Rome is Roma and Athens is Athênai or Athína.
I was a college student in Knossos in 1100BC. The lack of air conditioining was really rough.
Jerry? Is it you? I loose my clay tablet with contacts in Labyrinth
I went in Knossos 3 days ago but didn't see anything
Back then in my heyday, I was a lecturer. I do recall a rather sweaty but diligent student who went by the name of Collins. This chap never raised the issue of the lack of AC during class, though. Back then folk just made do with what they had and didn't complain.
same
Record temperatures too because of global warming 😂😂😂
Constantinople/Istanbul is impressive since 450 till 2020, on top of the list on and off for almost 1600 yrs. Just crazy to see how important that city is…
Look the amblem of Constatinople
As much as they try, they'll never rip out the Greek heart of that city. Hellenism is everywhere there, much to the dismay of its Turkish occupiers. (i.e. the Islamification of Hagia Sofia)
@@nicks.6341 My friend, this is now a Turkish city. Whether you accept it or not, calling the Turks occupiers in Istanbul today is nothing but ignorance.
@@kgyvaligenc6144 We will agree to disagree. The day is coming where Constantinople will no longer be a Turkish city. Remember these words and don't say you weren't warned.
@@nicks.6341I’m pretty sure the Crusades are over, bud.
Take up knitting or a cooking class. Some type of hobby
It’s insane that only after like 1700 years a city came close to the population of Rome
Many other cities around the world did though like Chang'an, Hanghzhou, Beijing, Baghdad, Vijayanagara, Agra, Lahore, Dhaka, Angkor and Tokyo.
Not in Europe
@@dwarasamudra8889 yes. But this is about europe thougu
@Clau007 it was the capital of the world lmao, it had unmatched power amd size
@@DR-fc1ey it really was not, they had no influence of anything outside of Europe and the Mediterranean
Crotonas, Syracuses and Sybaris were all Greek cities in what is nowadays Southern Italy, back then known as Magna Grecia.
Syracuse was not part of Magna Grecia. Sicily was already considered something else (Magna Grecia refers to the Italian peninsula!)
@@Giorma.u I'm pretty sure Manga Graecia refers to all Greek cities in Italy.
@@georgios_5342 yep but Sicily has started been considered part of Italy in the 19th Century, that's why this misunderstanding. While Itsly was Magna Grecia Sicily was Sikelia (in greek). The eastern part with culturally Greek cities, the western part with phoenician cities (like Palermo)
@@Giorma.u en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Graecia literally the definition of Magna Graecia includes cities in Sicily. I know that Sicily is called Sikelia and Syracuse kids definitely a Greek city, it's even obvious in its name, which has an y Graecum
@@georgios_5342 yep Wikipedoa must be updated on this! I'm sicilian and I studied sicilian history at uni 😅 (the italian wiki is different on this topic btw)
When they said "Glory of Rome" they really did mean the city itself not the country, at it's peak it was really 'the place to be' so to speak.
Great analysis! Is shocking to see how Constantinople/Byzantium/Istambul has been the greatest European city for 3 times in History!
Their whole population are afghans and Syrians and Arabs and sexist men who are
Muslim
open your eyes a little
Bit
2:04
Greece be like i own this list
Greece was getting more popular because ofc Greek Dark Ages
@@jcbw9975 Εμείς δώσαμε τα φώτα στον κόσμο
I'm not as fascinated by the growth of the cities as I am by the shrinking. Rome had a million people living there in Roman times (guess this also shows why they were called Roman times), and then it shrunk back to 40.000 and less, it must've been like a ghost town.
And then even before all that, imagine living in one of the largest towns, and there's only 50 other people.
After the sack of Rome in 1527 it went down to as little as 10,000.
It is like to see New York's population shrink from 8 million citizens to approx 100,000. New York would certainly feel like a ghost town.
@ that would be exciting to see. And maybe historians will make the comparison between New York and Rome in the far future.
İstanbul🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🌉🌆
London has some pretty interesting convulsions population falls from 9.5million to 7million in the later half of the 20th century and then ramps all the way back up in the 21st.
It’s amazing to see how much Greek and Roman’s city lasted
Those early southern Roman cities on this chart with the Italian flag, such as Syracuse (Sicily), should have the Greek flag associated to them. They were Greek cities/colonies and Sicily was Greek then (Magna Grecia).
@@nicks.6341yes same with some Ukrainian Spanish and French citoes
@@nicks.6341 none of the Italians cities should have the Italian flag then, Venice Milan etc...
странно, что у всех городов современные флаги тех государств в которых эти города сейчас географически расположены или располагались, но почему то напротив Константинополя нет флага Турции
Good observation
Constantinopla foi herdeira de Roma, era cristã ou católica seria estranho colocar a bandeira turca
@@noorna7123причём тут христиане и мусульмане? простая историческая несправедливость... Константинополь располагался на территории современной Турции и значит флаг должен быть турецкий или тогда переделывайте весь список.... Неаполь в 10 веке не имел никакого отношения к Италии и Риму это было отдельное независимое государство и так по каждому городу
Its okey bro. We own and embrace the geography we live in and everyone who lived here before us. We respect them very much. We do not like people who are not Turks and attribute everything to the religious war, but there is no problem, we have carried the whole legacy beautifully until today and we will carry it forever. Thank you for your objective perspective.
@@АлексейСергеев-ь4щ Україна топ 1
Italy and greece killled the list💥💥 amazing
Greece was in top 10 for almost 7000 years and still top 10 in 2022
Except they didn't. At least those cities pre 3000 BCE weren't Greek. The first city listed is on Cyprus and Indo-Europeans didn't settle Europe anywhere close to that years. This channel is just a Greek circlejerk.
@@minzblatt Cry kid.Cyprus was is and always will be Greek.Cyprus back then was Greek idiot thats why !
@@minzblatt why so jealous little turk?
@@minzblatt Knossos Mycenae Thebes etc was greek city states even the Italian flag cities like Syracuse was greek at that time....
@@minzblatt what is Europe? Can you search the root of the name Europe please? thank you.
St Petersburg (Leningrad) lost nearly a million people during WW2. This was not calculated in your numbers. But I did enjoy it.
@@sviatoslavkyshko4615 oink oink
Yeah, I too expected to see big drops around the big wars but that didn't happen. All in all, still a fascinating exercise even though I think it might need some tighter controls on the data to get a truly accurante portrait. Nevertheless, it's still very insightful and gives much food for thought.
and Serbia ww1
It also didn't show the drop in Lisbon in 1755 after the Earthquake destroyed most of the city.
You can also see how Berlin steadily grows from 1 million in the 1880's to almost 4 million when in reality it only got to around 2 million because there wasn't any space left and then it jumped to 4 million when the Berlin metro area was incorporated into the city, including some big cities like Charlottenburg, Spandau or Rixdorf (Neukölln).
It's impressive how old Rome, Athenes and Istanbul are and they return from their past glory.
Our continent is truly amazing. With this presentation you can literally observe the very beginnings, the Greek domination, the Rome domination, basically Greco-Roman culture, present for centuries and centuries, then the disappearance of old world, Rome must have been as if we would as if we would imagine today abandoned NYC in ruins with simple housing and people beside grandiose ruin buildings. Both fascinating and scary how long it took old cities to recover, basically its only quite recent that happened, its mind blowing. We can learn from history, we are now at the point like Rome was, I really hope we last and really hope we are not equivalently in some “405 ad” atm. I cant even imagine another dark age, how would that even look like and when on earth would we get out of it again. So, lets just love each other, i know we probably getting on each others nerves, everything seems like it’s escalating, but lets be tolerant,lets try not to vote for extreme parties (we know already that it never evolves into a good thing) and just have respect for everyone and we should be ok. 🙏 😅
The birthrate is what's going to cause the modern collapse. 70% of countries are below replacement already
I'm so glad italys populati9n will be 54 million by 2050. 2100 will habe 48 million and nigerial will have 300 million. All the mixed race and babies. So glad finally
I have not seen a dumber video on the Internet , there were no Ukrainian cities or villages until the 1900s . Because until 1300 all the lands from Poland to the Volga region were considered Russian . The land that was constantly conquered by the Russians, then the Poles, historically became independent just because of the unwillingness of either Poland or Russia to cede this territory to each other (the territory of today's Ukraine), so looking for Ukrainian villages in ancient times is like looking for photos of dinosaurs playing PlayStation.
@@benjamins8082fake news!!!
It took 1700 years for London to reach a million inhabitants in Europe after Rome did in 100 AD. Goes to show how immeasurably magnificent and grandiose Rome truly was for its era.
But what's still crazy is that London reached a million inhabitants sometime just around the early 1800s and by 1865 it was 3 million! And by the end of the century it was at 6.5 million! That's insane!
What's even more insane is the fact tiny island great Britain managed to become more powerful then any other European nation
That's what the industrial revolution does for you...
Immigrants, that are still pouring in today.
Well, check out the rise of Istanbul in the late 20th century - that's even more crazy.
Industrialisation and immigration, yes, causing rapid increase... but also the way the city expanded naturally to include the surrounding areas, which were previously counted as separate satellite towns and then went on to become London boroughs. All of that happened very suddenly once the new bridges connected the lands south of the Thames (which weren't counted as "London" before). So it's not like there were suddenly 6.5M people. Many of them were already there but just being counted differently.
1st place Rome:
270 B.C.-450 A.D. (720 years)
1st place New Rome/Constantinople:
450-995 (545 years)
1.030-1.260 (230 years)
as Istanbul:
1.490-1.720 (230 years)
2.005-2.020 (15 years)
Total: 1.020 years
Now it's a bit overpopulated, not exactly a thing to be proud of
Don't forget Córdoba
@@austrianballproductions6832 why Córdoba?
@@LiveYourLifeWithJoy binlerce yıllık Tarihi olan istanbulda yaşamaktan gurur duyuyorum . Evet belki fazla nufusu var . İstanbul için gururlanmamak nufusun çok olmasına engel değil . Yaşamayan bilemez istanbulu
@@levi_irn isso é muito bonito mas não está a aparecer a opção de traduzir, se quiseres ser entendido, fala em inglês, senão, paciência...
According to this video, St. Petersburg (Leningrad) population didn't change during the the blockade in 1941-44. It did. From approximately 3 millions to 550 thousands.
This is just an entertaining video
@@imperium_vox The entertainment largely comes from the purported accuracy of the numbers, otherwise it's about as entertaining as those videos made for babies, just colors and movement with a little tune in the background.
What one also has to consider is the population density these numbers imply. Take Metro-Paris for example with around 11 million people: this is like more than one sixth of the whole French population clustered in one place. A similar scenario is true for London or Madrid. This also implies that most of the economic power is centralized as well, leaving many other regions in the respective country underdeveloped. In Germany, the situation is different. Here the population is much more spread throughout the whole country due to its federal structure (and of course historic reasons). Berlin accounts just for approximately 4% of the German population. Of course there are regional differences as well, but they are less pronounced. I think it's really interesting to see that these simple numbers tell us so much more about a country as a whole :D
Yes we know it. We know you are filthy rich and smart so let us be proud of our populated cities please.
Very interesting, just one point: It does not show a reduction of the population during the plague. In 1665 to 1666 in London alone, it is estimated that around 100,000 people died of the plague and many more left London for rural areas to escape it. Also 1666 was the Great Fire of London where many more moved away because so much of the city was in ruins.
It also shows the Black Death as being a gradual event that took around 40 years when in reality most of the deaths happened in a five year span. The software that was used probably extrapolates data between data points that are far apart, so you don’t see these kinds of events
The Black Plague was in 1346. The big one at least.
Damn, Rome 1 mil in 70AC. Can you imagine managing a city of 1 million people in those times. Madness.
cities skylines jesus dlc
They had incredibly poor sanitation and the worst traffic in the history of the world. It was a shut show back then.
@@BenjaminIMeszaros you dont know what are you talking about, Rome had a system of sewers and aqueducts and the roads were built as in modern cities the baths were open to all, and many people had water directly at home, in medicine they had antibiotic, antibacterial anesthesia, and surgical instruments similar to modern ones, a similar result was not achieved until 1800
The amount of poor people/slaves was big too. You could store many in a cabin with ease, tho slaves back then were often treated way better than average poor romans. Many were a symbol of status, even to mere citizens.
@@padriandusk7107 then the slave after years of works they become free and citizen
I wish it was a bit easier to read the names of the cities. While Constantinople was out having a comparatively massive population, half ofthe other city names on the list were pushed out of the shot to the point of being illegible. It's really interesting data, and I like seeing it visualized like this, so it was kind of a bummer to lose all of those.
I agree 100%. I appreciate the effort put in to make a video such as this, yet in the first half of it it's extremely difficult to make out the names especially if the ancient cities are unknown to the viewer.
They should've inverted the position of names and number of population.
I think you should first referece the city in its proper name. Extremely disrespectful to history.
Agreed, show the number in the row and the name to the right. Half the cities are currently not even visible.
@@vesislavazheleva9977 Should have been a little more effort in my opinion.
очень впечатляет рост населения Ленинграда с 1941 по 1943. Прости им, ибо не ведают что творят
данные наверняка по переписям 1939 и 1959 гг, а между ними пропорциональный рост. Невзможно по всем городам брать строгую годовую статистику
Ещё реальная ржака - древние сёла под украинским флагом 😂
Во-первых, таких данных не существует и, видимо, идиот делавший видео повелся на укропских псевдоисториков, во-вторых, выбор флага исходя из нынешнего административного подчинения более чем сомнителен
ruZZia is a terrorist state.
А украинские города, за 7500л до нашей эры?
@@valiusvideo9212😂😂 в ролике правда начинается только с момента нашей эры , удивительно что там городища древних скайуокеров не показали . 😂😂
You really start to understand the magnitude of the events of the time when you notice that the only period in the last few hundred years major cities like London, Berlin, St. Petersburg, etc stopped headlong exponential growth and in fact started to de-populate was right around 1935-1945.
You understand the magnitude of the Black Plague when cities are losing up to a third of their population
Oh yeah, something happened back then... Can't recall :D
London's absolute decline carried on into the early 80's & its relative decline into the early 90's.
London's drop came from people moving out and into the countryside
@@greghallett4410 White flight?
Absolutely insane amount of growth Istanbul had in the last 100 years
Half of the country moved there without any control in last 60 years, created enormous favela districts and collapsed the infrastructure & society
Turkey is pretty misogynistic and women are still viewed as baby machines. Their president, Erdogan, has stated awful views on womanhood and Turkish people still vote for him because apparently he represents the average Turkish person's beliefs. Result: Even nowadays, average child per woman is 4.1, one of the highest in Europe (if not the highest). Hence, the insane rise. Istanbul's growth is literally the result of controlling women and their bodies.
@@xyz-yu3xm No wrong. Educate yourself first before you write a comment like this
@@eren6362 yav he he..
@@xyz-yu3xm bstter u have 0 clue hahah hater
Ancient Rome had a population of 1 million. Its amazing that it took nearly 2000 years for London to become only the second city in Europe to do it.
and now 1 mil looks loke a joke
And London was once itself founded by the Romans as a provincial capital.
@@PickledShark I might be wrong or inaccurate in some way because I have very little knowledge of the Romans in Britain but were cities like Colchester or whatever it’s called also the capital for a short period of time
@@jwkkwu Castra, in Italian "Accampamento" was changed into chester. So every chester you hear comes from that. London's original name was Londinium
Va beh stai parlando di Londra, praticamente quando Roma governava il mondo probabilmente gli abitanti di Londra vestivano con pellicce e cacciavano scoiattoli.
Ancient Greece: The larger the theater, the larger the population.🙂
Somehow I miss the Scandinavians. Didn't they document their population growth?
Constantinople has only been officially called Istanbul since the 1930s, I think. That's fine too, thank you.
I'm Italian, and I'm proud of Rome, was the best city in the wor...
Costantinople: I'm going to end this man whole career
Yes well realisticly Constantinopolis was just rome moved and given another name, all political people and supporters moved, wealthy moved, poor moved for easier life etc
@@smokybacon3662 thats propably why it collabsed right after lmao
Costantinple is nothing compared to rome glory
@@Cuoreromano90 WHAT?
@@Cuoreromano90that’s true
Rome's steady and rapid population decline started on the year 350 mark, around the same time that Constantinople experienced a surge in numbers, although it took 100 more years for Constantinople to displace Rome in the Number 1 spot. This is primarily due to Constantinople becoming the new permanent capital of the Roman Empire, although there are other factors like civil wars (Crisis of the Third Century and the wars of the Tetrarchy) and Emperors staying far away from Rome when on lengthy campaigns against barbarians.
Constantinople held the Top 1 spot from 450 to 1265, with a brief interruption by Córdoba from 995-1025 due to the latter being a political and commercial center in Spain. Take note that Constantinople's population decline itself started around the 1205 mark, just a year after the Fourth Crusade sacked the city, and Paris eventually took the Top 1 place on 1265, four years after the Eastern Romans retook the city. By this time the ERE had been reduced to just Greece and portions of western Anatolia
I think Rome lost 1/3 of its population due a plague twice
Lan o istanbul
Also, Rome's decline happened around then because that's when it started to really become apparent that it wasnt in a secure, defensible location and that was beginning to matter more than ever. It was also becoming increasingly hard to provide for a city of that size in that location when its countryside was frequently subject to raids (hence why it started becoming utterly dependent on Africa's grain supply, which the Vandals would later take control of)
I think it's also interesting to note that it took 1500 years for another European city (London) to reach the 1 million mark after Rome's population declined so heavily.
I found it interesting that right before Constantinople was founded, Trier was the second biggest city in Europe if the data in the video is accurate.
Greece staying in the top 11 for 8,500 years is impressive
That actual flag used to present greece is wrong bc it exists only from 1978.
But as usual it's not taken so serious with accuracy in respresenting the history.
Never believe the history unless u didnt create it (a wise man said)😉
Noone said it did. There's a bunch of flags and names in the video which aren't accurate. It's just made this way for simplicity.
The ancient Greeks were very impressive.
@@stevez8779 noone isn't a word....
3:10
7th century BC
Syracuse🇬🇷 was not Italian but a Greek (Magna Grecia) city. Birthplace of Greek mathematician Archimedes
The same goes for all the towns in South Italy (aka Magna Grecia)
From Neapolis (Napoli) downwards:
Agrigento, Taranto etc
In this representation they used the actual flags, not the historic geography. For consistence it is better to keep this logic.
@@trattogattoOnly exception is Constantinople i guess.If only Turkish flag had been used.
In 1836 half of the cities were French, in 1941 half of Europe was occupied by Nazi so…
@@lr7694_
You compare 4-5 years of Nazi occupation with hundreds of years (more than 10 centuries) Greeks living and establishing cities in Magna Grecia?
We are talking about Greek cities which were founded by Greeks.
I'm a historian ikr 👍
It's quite impressive that Greece - a very small country in the world today counting 2022 - was consistently in the Top 5 for nearly 7 Millenia! That's just crazy!
Well, it was the case in Europe. East Asian, Middle East, North Aftrica had much larger citities then Europe's.
Also, I think (?), the main reason Greece had big cities, mostly because the trading happened between the Middle Eastern/North African cities and Greece (just my thoughts, may not have the reality).
Because the rest of Europe did farming in spread out villages but Greeks did trading so they founded cities and lived closer. Thats why after the Romans fell, Western European cities lost population. Because the people went back to the farmlands and villages and could actually live easier because they werent forced into cities and starved by the Romans. After West Rome fell, West European living standards rised almost to the level of prosperous Chinese cities of the time.
It does help that during the first few of those "7 millennia", Greece was the only part of Europe that was "civilised". 🤣
@@pineapplesareyummy6352
B A R B A R I A N S !
Istanbul which is now the largest city is the same as Constantinople. The Turks changed its name after they took over.
It's interesting to see how a few ukrainian and balkans settlements were so heavily populated during the neolithic. The cucuteni-trypilla culture and the vinca culture deserve some love
It's one of the best places to sustain life in Europe. Perfect climate and perfect soil.
The Vinca coulture from Belo brdo (white hill) is a part of today's Belgrade (white city)
Yougoslavia flooded Lepenski Vir to build a dam. Not much love to be seen here 😞
@@bike-cave-man2527 Russia has nothing to do with the Balkan peninsula, and is newer than most of the countries there. If Kievan Rus is what you meant, its territories never passed Danube river.
Not ukranian, ukraine was created in 1991
Imagine how much space there was back then compared to how crowded everything is rigth now
It’s what happens when people don’t want to talk about population control, and it’ll probably get worse😒
@@InfiniteApollo12 Leave the city and you'll see that the world is not overpopulated. Being in a city makes people think it is when it is not.
@@momentary_ If any, its about to be underpopulated, with birth rates plummeting worldwide.
@@momentary_ For real. Cities really do not take up that much land in the scheme of things. Drive through the U.S. and you will see that the vast majority of it is empty/farmland. Of course that doesn't mean that humans aren't negatively impacting the environment in a lot of other ways
*U.S. and probably most other countries except for like... City-states.
Great video!
Always remembered this passage from Will Durant's "The Life of Greece" about Sybaris, once the richest city in antiquity:
All went well with Sybaris until it slipped into war with its neighbor Crotona (510). We are unreliably informed that the Sybarites marched out to battle with an army of 300,000 men. The Crotonians, we are further assured, threw this force into confusion by playing the tunes to which the Sybarites had taught their horses to dance. The horses danced, the Sybarites were slaughtered, and their city was so conscientiously sacked and burned that it disappeared from history in a day."
Started Durant’s Hustory of Civilization during 2020 lockdowns.
Slowly working my way through it has been a joy.
@@brantlarson421 Really glad people are still reading him.
I guess the modern day equivalent might be something like the tanks or drones getting hacked to spin in circles, hah.
I am from there! no it's a shitty village with clearly not the same prestige
I can't believe my island, Ischia, which was a Greek colony in southern Italy, is in the list between 2:28 and 3:08. It's a tiny island near Naples that's inhabited by 60,000 people today and got to 7,500 before getting out of the list in 690 BC. I'm from there and I had no fuckin' idea we were so important at that time 😆
Tu sei Greco ma non lo sapeva . allora lo conosci haja
Half of Italian area down below to Greece they live there after Rome grow they push Greeks back to Greece and some stay many leaves.
@@unexplainedwearenotalone3537 DNK tra Greci e Italiani da Sicilia sono molto simili in questo momento!
@Chizzel Wizzel yeah, surely the fact I didn't know my island was the n.9 largest city in Europe 3000 years ago means I never read books... as if every book in the world mentioned that information. Maybe you should read less and think more.
In 3045, a New Yorker will says "I had no ideas, my little city was so important in 21th century. Now the powerful city is EMC Elon Musk City on Jupiter" 😂
Nice video. Rome's decline in Late Antiquity is bit too early. Theoderic's Rome (490s-520s) was probably about 500000 by modern estimates. Rome's real dip in population was only during the Gothic wars (535-550s). But that is just a detail.
Thank you for your great effort. But if you may allow me, I see a contradiction here! When the cities like Cordoba, Sevilla and Granada appeared you used the Spanish flag which means your criteria is the present-day situation, while you used the Byzantine flag that no longer exists for Constantinople and same city appeared with Turkish flag when it was renamed as Istanbul.
It’s interesting to see each country taking the lead throughout the times… Of course this is just agglomeration it does not take into account other entry otherwise I think it might have been very different in some periods…
Oh and, we need to talk more about Paris, they stayed at the top for soooo long and kept rising even during the 100years war… it’s impressive considering that and also aaaalll the epidemic the Europe went through.
I have not seen a dumber video on the Internet , there were no Ukrainian cities or villages until the 1900s . Because until 1300 all the lands from Poland to the Volga region were considered Russian . The land that was constantly conquered by the Russians, then the Poles, historically became independent just because of the unwillingness of either Poland or Russia to cede this territory to each other (the territory of today's Ukraine), so looking for Ukrainian villages in ancient times is like looking for photos of dinosaurs playing PlayStation.
There was no Russia..the Kieven Rus were a thing long before the Duchy of Muscovy@@user-muserf
What surprises me the most is how insignificant Rome was for most of the last millennium. I didn't think Rome was ever a small city, but it really didn't have a resurgence until after WWI.
It's basically because it was repopulated after 1870, when it was conquered from the Pope and made capital of the Kingdom of Italy. The choice of making it capital (Turin and Florence were temporary capitals after unification, despite Naples being the biggest city) was made explicitly because of the great historical legacy, even if it was a relatively small city before that.
Small but it still kept its fundamental role of capital of christianity. I say this as an atheist, I noticed that nowadays people don't really realize how impacting was the Pope and how strongly tied Rome was to its role. It might not have figured in this chart for a thousand years, but its power was dramatic
@@drummerdavide93 Wow that's pretty cool tbh
8:48
Turkey:i am speed
Under Dragon Ottoman Empire coming
@@krenardoci4536 *POLISH HUSSARIANS WANTS TO KNOW YOUR LOCATION*
@@winogronkowa *THE GOLDEN HORDE WANTS TO KNOW BOTH OF YOUR LOCATION*
@@winogronkowa red russians knowing your location already ^_^
Ver mehteri
I love how Greece dominates the list and than disappears in 1475, but than reappears 500 years later in 1954
12:07
Warsaw: *appears
Me: *happy polish noises*
Declines massively at 1911, hmmmmmmmmmmmm
Not funny didn't laugh
Moscow has 13mil im city limits but 18mil in urban area, Istanbul has 15.5mil in city limita but 15.8mil in urban area, Paris has 2.3mil in city limits but 11mil in urban area…so these stats are not accurate if you consider city limits for one city and urban limits for another. Unlike the US, in Europe we don’t have city, urban and metro areas standardised, they are different from country to country.
if you count urban areas istanbul would likely to have 20m+ people even now it has 16m turkish citizens in city and it probabily has more than a half million refugees and other people
Yeah the City of London only has 10,000 people living in it! 9 million in what most people generally call London and 13-15 in the wider metropolitan area.
Это не Москва, это деревни возле Москвы)
The urban area (that the building continuity you expect in a city) gets often mixed up with the more modern concept of "Metropolitan Area", that is an area connected by modern transportation, services and economic ties that can also include mere villages. If you take metropolitan areas Paris and London are both around 14.5M, Istanbul at 15.5 (but half of it is in Asia) and Moscow at 20M. Also to be even fairer the german Ruhr Metropolitan Area of 10M should be ranked.
So the ranking should be as follows
#1 Moscow
#2 Paris
#3 London
#4 Ruhr
#5 european Istanbul
Correct. Madrid is 3m for the Municipality but 7m for the metropolitan area. I think metro areas should be taken into account in all cases. The massive Madrid’s surrounding municipalities accounting for more population than in the city would not exist as such without the main city.
Very informative and very impressive video.
Just a small correction, Constantinople kept the original name Constantinople even after the 1400's, ... up to 20th Century..
Only in 1930 the name changed to Instabul. Actually , even the current name Instabul is a street pronunciation of the colloquial Greek expression "IsTanPoli", that its proud inhabitants called it when referring to the "Poli" or "Queen of Cities" as it was known for more than a Thousand years.
To all of you Greek simpletons out there still thinking you own the place: The city existed far before your ancestors even evolved any common language (PIE) ca. 8000 BCE, let alone colonizing Anatolia and İstanbul. Lyg-s was the original Thracian name.
Istanbul= Εις την πόλιν = In the city
@Rat Rat No absolutely not. The name shifted from Constantinople to Istambul following Atatürk's reforms in the 1920. As the founder of the Republic of Turkey, a secular state, he surely wouldn't have supported the renaming of the city to such a religious name. He was a Turk before being a Muslim. Besides that, the hypothetical evolution from "Islambul" to "Istanbul" makes no sense, comparing to the evolution from "IsTanPoli" to "Istanbul".
@@costenics_sw or eis tan poli(polin) means to the city it is not greek language it is helen language so you are right btw first time i see a greek person knows this information everybody thought we change the city name to turkish but actually we use the oldest name of the city
Instabul? Did Instagram buy it?
Proud to be Cypriot living 50km from the very first city Choitokoitia.
Very happy to see how my city, Córdoba, Spain, was for years the most populated and important city in Europe
Ye because of arabs
@@erwinrommel1822 yeah no one remembers that genocide of innocent people by the crusaders, as they couldnt win a fair war against the muslims.
@@erwinrommel1822 arab agricultural revolution does wonders look at palermo too
should have had a different flag for that time period though:)
Btw I love Cordoba, one of my favourite places I've ever visited. You live in a very beautiful city!
@@erwinrommel1822 most of its inhabitans were muladis(spanish muslims) and mozarabs the elites were the arabd but they were a tiny minority
OK, I really do appreciate this video and all the effort that went into it.
The figures are a bit hard to understand though. According to Wikipedia the population of Paris fell to about 100,000 by the year 1422 (as a result of the Plague and the civil war) and reached 150,000 again by the year 1500. You put the figure for Paris close to 215,000 around the year 1422.
The city of Ghent, estimated at around 55,000 in the year 1500 is stated as 149,190, nearly 3 times that figure.
Britannica mentions that Paris reached the 1 million inhabitants mark by 1870. That just half of the 2 million mentioned by you.
And so on.
Another mistake which was confusing was that the population of Paris circa 2019 was 2.2 million, which the video was 9 million off of.
@@thecha4570 This probably refers to the entire urban area of Paris, all suburbs included. If the same area was used to calculate the population in 1422 the figure stated in the video would probably be right. The video description does mention "agglomeration". I can only assume that the present-day borders (incl. suburbs) have been used and projected back in time. Paris in the middle ages, despite very clearly defined outer walls, would not be just that area in this video, but Paris + villages/towns outside the city walls. People who lived outside the walls would not have been considered Parisian by any means, but I understand the necessity to add them nonetheless in order to make the geographical area coincide with the present borders.
@@thecha4570 I do wonder what they consider and define Paris to be. This number looks miles off.
The video says agglomeration, The number of the Ghent agglomeration is correct.
@@leonidasblue3973 That's possible, but the current suburbs of Ghent were mainly marsh or farmland back in 1500. Perhaps the author can enlighten us by explaining the figure.
Wow, changed my realization of how big cities are in Europe. I knew Istanbul was big but even being there briefly I didn't realize it's a city of 16 million people. I just assumed the largest city today in Europe was either Paris or London with Moscow or Rome at third place or maybe a city in Spain.
It is over 20m now.
Modern migration from the periphery has had a big impact on major European cities and Istanbul is, and always will be first in line.
Only half of Istanbul is in Europe...
@@Cosmopavone cry more pls
@@Cosmopavone sadece Avrupa yakasında 9 milyon insan yaşıyor bu bile ilk üçe girmesi için yeterli
So cool you mention Vinča and Lepenski Vir
Syracuse was Greek colony as well as Taranto
Basically all the South of Italy was greek colony... I'm from Naples, " Nea Polis " in greek = new city 😜
@@Alex-yy4wq Yasou fratello!
@@georgios.marinoudis una razza fratello!
Ok, so? In the video there are the flags of modern countries
@@rebeccatrivelloni9903 what about byzantium flag then???
I found it super interesting.
One note, you have counted the metropolitan areas as a very big thing, at least in Barcelona or Madrid, you have counted its entire region, 311 municipalities in Barcelona instead of the 36 that make up its urban area.
I also found it amazing when I saw Athens go from 400,000 inhabitants to only 40,000 in just 380 years. But then I saw Rome go from a million inhabitants to 50,000 inhabitants in 560 years and I was even more surprised. I thought cities maintained their population better over time (at least cities haven't lost population for a long time now)…
I also liked to know how many inhabitants the cities had when they decided to inaugurate their metro services (of course you considered an area much larger than the urban area of the city itself).
London 1863: 2.93 million
Paris 1900: 3.34 million
Berlin: 1902: 2.83 million
both rome and athens were dependent for their size on the concentration of resources of the empires they were at the centers of. so when they loose the connection to those empires, they crumble rapidly since they cannot feed their own populations and people flee
@@federubio2519 i dont think athens had much of an empire but it was still the biggest player in greece before sparta and macedon crushed it.
I have not seen a dumber video on the Internet , there were no Ukrainian cities or villages until the 1900s . Because until 1300 all the lands from Poland to the Volga region were considered Russian . The land that was constantly conquered by the Russians, then the Poles, historically became independent just because of the unwillingness of either Poland or Russia to cede this territory to each other (the territory of today's Ukraine), so looking for Ukrainian villages in ancient times is like looking for photos of dinosaurs playing PlayStation.
Your note is incorrect. It's not about the area, it's about the density. Spain tends to micro-separate his cities in tiny municipalities, so the cities tend to show a lower population than what they really had. The video is correct.
@@user-muserfThey show where the cities are now.
FYI - now part of modern Italy but back then Syracuse, Agrigento, Sybaris, Taranto all of these cities were founded as Greek Colonies by the Greeks
Ancient Greeks*
Athens should have a Roman flag during the Roman Empire then.
mycene was better
@@alejandrop.s.3942 "founded" and "conquered" are different things.
@@FranciscoJG Madrid as we know it was founded by Muslims (aside from some Roman evidences in several locations), should it appear in the video with a flag which isn't Spain's?
I don't know if you get my point. I understand what you mean, but it's trying to make a simple question too complex. And it's not a casuality that there're several comments of Greek guys commenting this very same detail. It's ok being proud of your history, but many Greeks whom I have run into in the internet are obsessed with these kind of things, as if there was a secret conspiracy against Greece. And this comes from a guy who's totally in love with Greece.
It's truly amazing how accurately they counted each town's citizens even back then isn't it. 🤣
Damn italy really went hard on this list
Grindelz Greece went hard on this list
I'm from italy
@@Berkant0 anche io
Hi, from Southern Italy (where started the Italic Nation)
@@andreadaloia6866 Ciao dalla toscana :)
Constantinople. The greatest loss of Europe.
Great video by the way!
Thank mate!
Those names of towns in Ukraine in the beginning - is names of nearby modern villages that are closest to the archeological sites.Trypillya culture is quite mysterious.
@A N this was way before slavs
Italy has quite the staying power. She never dropped out of the rankings from 1800 BC to today. That's about 3,800 years of being at the top of the urban race here. Good for Italy!
So Roman empire was Italian?
@@bohunter6091 ''Italia'' was the name of the province and ''italici'' the name given by roman government to the citizens of this province
THATS A LOT OF GREECE
at least they got some data
Greece has dominated the vast amount of history by thousands of years. Even in medieval times the Greek byzantine cities of Constantinople and Thessaloniki were high on top
Nope..today Greeks is mix of some ortadox people live in region . With same logic Illyrians and Republic citizen (Turks and cousins ) too can "proud " about it
@@Üstad_15 says a nobody with fantasy far from the truth.
Turks originate from Mongolia 1100AD, 900 years ago, 6000 km away from the Mediterranean, where the whole of Turkey is Greek of origin with thousands of years of Greek civilization far far before any Turkic forefather even came into existence in their native homelands of Mongolia
Anyone can Google ANY city in Turkey to see its origins being Greek.
Also. Albanians are not Greek. They are the descendants of the Illyrians, a non Greek people above the Greek world.
For further world history education I advise you to do a 1 minute search of this time period of the ancient Greek world and the non Greek tribes of the Northern Balkans, loke the Paeonians, Illyrians and so on.
Now scram, and educate yourself
@@Ptolemy336VV not from Mongolia but from eastern side of Caspic Sea , about Turkmenistan today
@@mariusstan352 Wrong. The ultimate origin of Turkic people are in Mongolia and actually so far up North East Russia today. The very recorded historic evidences of the very first proto Turkic people in existence dates back from 200 BCE by Chinese acounts. The Turkic people at that time lived Around Mongolia and Altai mountain area. Hence their language being part of the Altai language tree.
👍 Besides, there is always a Greek city/ a city founded by Greeks, throughout the timeline. Another exclusivity 😎😉
for me, as a czech living in Praga, it's wonderful seeing her make it to the board. It makes perfect sense, also, from historical point of view. In 14th century, Charles IV. ruled Holy Roman Empire and Czech lands (Bohemia, Morava). In that time, he made Praga main city of the Empire and lived there. That's the moment, Praga enters the chat. His son did live here too, but then the hussite wars plundered Czechia. It's interesting to see, that during the wars, Praga was at it's best. Wars ended in 1434. Then the population starts to drop and I'm not sure why. Anyway, the next ruler, who moved to Praga in the Holy Roman Empire, was Rudolf II. He made the city a haven for alchemists and artists from all over Europe. That was the little comeback in 1590 on the board:D
nice!! thats so cool
Is Praga the Czech name for Prague?
@@CTGReviews In Czech is it Praha. Praga is old Czech/German name for it, not sure about it.
@@CTGReviews no its praha
Guys, someone already told me it was Praha in Czech. I’m not deleting it, it’s there for context so people know something.
Massillia (Marseille) was one of the most important city above Greek Empire, one of the most powerful west harbor of the mediterranean sea. It miss also Carthage if i am not wrong
Greece: I used to rule the world
A great way to see the evolution of Europe. Very good video. Keep it like this!
I love how Constantinople drops off for a hundred years or so, then Istanbul comes racing to 1st out of nowhere
Islam spread like a plague, you are right.
It took until 1810 for Europe to have another city of 1 million people after Rome. Makes you think how huge Rome really was, considering there were a lot less people in Europe overall back then.
Crazy how rome went from a million to 20k in a couple hundred years
London just drops in the war after everyone went to the countryside and not as many cane back
Until the massive immigration
It's interesting how the population count of the capitals of nations or regional power centres quite accurately reflect the relative power leves of the nations at every time in history.
edit: even if the data has its limits, all data always has
Usually, yes. But then comes Warsaw... I was sorta expecting to see it on the list sometime in the 17th-18th century, meanwhile it pops up for a brief moment on the break of 19th/20th :D
Istanbul was erased from the list during WWI ~1910 since Turkey lost the war.
I am from Córdoba(Spain) and I really wanted to see my City on the top at least once. It really happen in the past
Y no sólo de europa, también lo fue del mundo, viva córdoba, también soy de aquí
@@alvaro005y'all are Castilian, nothing to do with al Andalus
As someone from Spain, the notion that Cordoba surpassed Constantinople in population and was the largest city in Europe for some solid years, it's absolutely wild
Arabs were in action at that times
It was the largest and most civilized city at one point in the 10th century
Moreover I feel like the numbers in this video is faulty. Cordoba had at least 1 million inhabitants by the late 900s in most sources
Then christianity ruined it : )
Arabs were the rulling and intermixed minority.
People just moved to the centre ( Madrid, Toledo, Valladolid) or to the coast. Like every Spaniard have been doing in the last 700 years if they have the chance.
I would like to correct a mistake;
The name of the city of Constantinople remained as Constantinopol after the Ottomans conquered it. After 1928, the name of the city was changed as a result of attempts to make the world forget its importance by the pressures of the west after the collapse of the Ottoman. It was not called Istanbul during the Ottoman period. The Ottomans did not change the name of the conquered lands, did not interfere with the freedom of language and belief of the people. They only transformed strategic structures into mosques as the symbol of domination of Islam.
So after 1453, the flag should have changed, but the name of the city should have remained the same ;)
This is bullshit. Didn't you read any book in your life?
True but false at the same time, it was called Kostantiniyye in the Ottoman times.
@@KY4FCLAN That’s merely an arabization of the name.
every other city has the modern country flag and english name. Medieval Cordoba has the Spain flag... By that logic Constantinople should have Turkey's flag and be called Istanbul for the whole video.
@@antunatomasan here something else has been shown and emphasized...the ottoman empire did not interfere in the culture, religion, language and living habits of the conquered territories and they even did not this for the original names of the conquered cities!....although they conquered these areas they did show unpredecented tolerance towards all people....for example greece was for 400 years territory of the ottoman empire.....but greek people never have converted to islam....and greeks have always spoken their own language and never turkish....this kind of tolerance is something very unusual, especially for that time....and so even the name of constantinople remained the same until 1928....these are facts.....
Thats great to see you back on top, Con... Istanbul
Never forget your roots. 😉
Is Constantinople exotic Asian
Constantinople was the city, where a Christian Europe began. There the Roman law has been codificated, which is still the base of all European law systems. In the region of Constantinople Christianity was transformed from a sect into a state religion.
Exotic Asian? New Rome was for centuries the centre of the European civilization.
@@LondonPower Are you idiot?
That was TRULY FASCINATING . I wonder what Egypt looked like by comparison .
This video was a good comparison but I would like to point out that you used modern flags for most of these cities but for constantinople you used the byzantine empire. Else then that pretty good!
A little mistake i noticed here: St. Petersburg would have been known as Leningrad during the reign of the Soviet Union.
As i understood, most cities flags and names are taken as they are now. Kiyv, for example have Ukraine flag, but no Ukraine was then. Also, Sarai, marked as russian, also really was not russian city then.
@@Bezzarder yes but for some reason Constantinople has Eastern-Roman flag.
@@Bezzarder Rus used the same flag Ukraine is using nowadays. But in general video is using flags of the states on which territories city is/was located. With few exceptions. For example Feodosia is Ukrainian city, but they decided to use flag of RF
@@nianight Крым- Россия, клоун
@@morpheliusss в твоих влажных мечтах, клоун
Very nice and interesting video!
Most interesting for me were the rises of Rome (1st city with 1 million inhabitants at 70 AC) and Istanbul at the end!
Dude realy learned history from McDonalds
As a person from Switzerland it seems insane to me that more people can live in a single city than in my entire country!
Just looking at the numbers, you can understand or remember what happened historically, following migration patterns. By the way it took 1600 years to replicate 1M Metropolitan population in Rome for London. Numbers are always so important to look and analyse, they explain reality.
100% correct. important to note that in recent times major local wars led by the us have been fought in the countries where the oldest settlements in the world are located, iraq and ukraine :D
Ww2 it went down and up
Analysis means scrutinising and questioning too. The Rome figure's bunk given a walled area of 14 sq km even allowing for some additional overspill.
I like how London has a look in the 3rd century, decides it's too early, and times its run beautifully for the 17th century
I loved that too
How anybody can believe we have enough data to figure out the population's evoultion of cities in ancient Greece and Rome by the scale of a decade and precission of units?