The pilgrim traffic which went to view the relics gathered in Constantinople

Rome was a famous storehouse of relics, but so was Constantinople. Its churches and palaces, with their gold furnishings, rich decoration and relics, exercised an immensely powerful attraction upon the Western world. Pilgrims continued to reach Constantinople from the West throughout the early medieval centuries, but major contact was made with the First Crusade, which reached Constantinople soon after 1096, and with many succeeding crusading ventures. Eventually the Fourth Crusade of 1204 took and sacked the city, and finally Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453; as a result much ecclesiastical and other material arrived in the West.