The restoration of the city now popularly called Istanbul as a worthy capital of a worldwide empire is one of the tasks to which Mehmed II sets his heart.

To encourage the return of the Greeks and the Genoese of Galata (the trading quarter of the city), who have fled, he returns their houses and provides them with guarantees of safety.

In order to repopulate the city, he deports Muslim and Christian groups in Anatolia and the Balkans and forces them to settle in Constantinople.

He restores the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate on January 6, 1454, and establishes a Jewish grand rabbi and an Armenian patriarch in the city.

In addition, he founds, and encourages his viziers to found, a number of Muslim institutions and commercial installations in the main districts of Constantinople.

The victorious Turks had immediately converted the Hagia Sophia for use as a mosque, adding four minarets at the perimeter of the structure.

The Ottomans convert Saint Savior in the Chora to a mosque, calling it Kariye Djami, and whitewash (and thus protect, perhaps inadvertently) its magnificent mosaics and frescoes.

Construction begins on the Ottoman sultan’s Topkapi Palace.