The Fall of Constantinople marks a milestone in European history, as well as in the history of the Near East. It definitively closed a significant historical period that began with the founding of the City by Emperor Constantine and was characterized by the gradual Hellenization of the eastern Roman state, the dominance of the Roman legal system, and the Greek language and literature.

The Fall of the City, and shortly thereafter the dissolution of the Empire of Trebizond and the capture of Mystras, confirmed the definitive supremacy of a different cultural model, that of Islam, which had been born centuries earlier in the deserts of Arabia and was in complete contrast to the Greco-Roman tradition of the East.