Which city was sacked by the Fourth Crusade in 1204?

Which city was sacked by the Fourth Crusade in 1204? Constantinople was sacked.

In April 1204, crusaders and Venetian forces captured and brutally sacked Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. The attack was the shocking culmination of the Fourth Crusade, which had originally been organized to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem. Instead, political disputes, financial pressures, and Byzantine dynastic struggles redirected the expedition toward the Christian city.

The crusaders looted palaces, churches, libraries, and private homes over several days. The city’s greatest church, Hagia Sophia, was seized and converted for Latin Christian use. The conquerors established the Latin Empire of Constantinople, while Byzantine refugees founded successor states such as the Empire of Nicaea.

This event is often confused with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. The 1204 sack was carried out by fellow Christians during a crusade; the 1453 conquest was an Ottoman victory that ended the Byzantine Empire. The Fourth Crusade therefore deepened, rather than healed, the division between Eastern and Western Christianity.