A map of the Fourth Crusade showing its routes over the Christian and Muslim territories of the time. It accompanies the article on the sack of Constantinople.
This map accompanies the article The Sack of Constantinople by David Porrinas (University of Extremadura), published in issue 246 of Historia National Geographic. It shows Europe, the Mediterranean and the Near East at the time of the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204), with territories coloured by religion: Latin (Catholic) Christian, Greek (Orthodox) Christian, Armenian Christian and Muslim.
Two itineraries are drawn over this background. The route of the Fourth Crusade, a solid line, passes through Venice and Zadar and ends at Constantinople. Zadar was a city of the Catholic Kingdom of Hungary that the crusaders sacked in 1202 to pay off their debt to Venice; Constantinople was stormed in April 1204. The dashed line marks the route to Syria taken by a minority of French knights who refused to march on Constantinople and set out for the Holy Land instead.
Zooming in reveals the names of cities, kingdoms and empires, from the Iberian Peninsula to Armenia and the Ayyubid Sultanate. Alongside the map, a timeline runs from the crusades of 1099 to the founding of the Latin Empire of Constantinople in 1204.
Published in Historia National Geographic no. 246, 2026-05
