he conquest of Constantinople in May 1453 linked together the Asiatic and European possessions of the Ottomans. They could now turn to the conquest of the other regions that had once been part of the Byzantine Empire. In 1456 they took Athens. In 1460 they abolished the Despotate of the Morea and, in 1461, they dissolved the Empire of Trebizond. The Ottoman Empire now included Serbia, which had fallen into Turkish hands in 1459, the Kingdom of Bosnia, which had been subdued in 1463 and the rest of the Slav and Albanian regions, which they had conquered by the end of that century.

Although the Byzantine Empire fell into the hands of the Ottomans in 1453, its political and cultural heritage continued to exert an influence in both the former Byzantine dominions and among the European and Slav peoples. This ancient Greek and Latin heritage Byzantium had faithfully preserved and was to hand down, when, at the time of the Renaissance, the West became ready to receive it.