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Place-names‘Stampolda’: a 1635 panorama catches a city changing its name
Matthäus Merian's sweeping view of Constantinople records the name on its way to Istanbul.
The engraved title of Matthäus Merian's great panorama of Constantinople is the fun part: Constantinopolitanae Urbis Effigies ad vivum expressa, quam Turcae Stampoldam vocant. A° MDCXXXV — 'a true-to-life image of the city of Constantinople, which the Turks call Stampolda, 1635.'
'Stampolda' is a European ear catching Stamboul — the colloquial name already in use, on its long way to becoming the official Istanbul of 1930. To find it frozen in a Latin caption of 1635 is to catch a city renaming itself in real time.
Along the foot of the sheet runs a bilingual Latin-and-German key numbering 27 landmarks — Hagia Sophia (S. Sophia), the Seraglio (Topkapı), the Hippodrome, the tower of Galata. And Merian frames the vast skyline with an idealized pastoral foreground of rolling hills, riders and a hunter with his dogs — a theatrical device to give the view depth and lead the eye across the Golden Horn.
Sources: Wüthrich, Das druckgraphische Werk von Matthaeus Merian d. Ä., vol. 4
