High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Byzantine architecture is the architecture of the Byzantine Empire. The empire gradually emerged as a distinct artistic and cultural entity from what is today referred to as the Roman Empire after AD 330, when the Roman Emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire east from Rome to Byzantium. Byzantium, "New Rome", was later renamed Constantinople and is now called Istanbul. The empire endured for more than a millennium, dramatically influencing Medieval and Renaissance era architecture in Europe and, following the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, leading directly to the architecture of the Ottoman Empire.