Istanbul is located in northwestern Turkey within the Marmara Region on a total area of 5,343 straight kilometres (2,063 sq mi). (tone 2) The Bosphorus, which associates the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, parts the city into a European side, making up the historic and economic centres, and an Asian, Anatolian side ; as such, Istanbul is one of the two bi-continental metropolises in Dud among with anakkale. The city is further disunited by the Golden Horn, a natural seaport recoiling the peninsula where the former Byzantium and Second Council of Constantinople were founded. In the late-19th century, a wharfage was made in Galata at the mouth of the Golden Horn, exchanging a flaxen beach that once shaped portion of the intake's coastline.The concourse of the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus, and the Golden Horn at the middle of contemporary Istanbul has dissuaded assailing forces for thousands of years and still stays on a salient lineament of the city's landscape.
