The Routledge Handbook of the Byzantine City

Nikolas Bakirtzis is an Associate Professor at The Cyprus Institute in Nicosia, Cyprus. His research focuses on Byzantine monasticism, medieval cities and fortifications, and the island landscapes of the Byzantine, medieval, and early modern Mediterranean. As the Director of the Andreas Pittas Art Characterization Labs, he leads research on the materiality of medieval and early modern art enhanced through the use of advanced digital and analytical methods. His work has received support from the European Commission, the Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation, the Princeton Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, the A.G. Leventis Foundation, and the Getty Research Institute. Luca Zavagno is an Associate Professor of Byzantine Studies at Bilkent University, Turkey. He is the author of many articles and books on the early medieval and Byzantine Mediterranean. His research focuses on Byzantine urbanism and medieval Mediterranean insularity. He has been awarded the Dumbarton Oaks Summer Fellowship twice (in 2011 and 2016) as well as the prestigious Stanley Seeger Fellowship of the Hellenic Studies Center at Princeton University (2012), the Newton Mobility Grant (2018), and he has been twice a fellowship at Center for Advanced Studies ‘Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’ at the University of Tubingen, Germany (2022 and 2023).

List of Illustrations

List of Contributors

Introduction

Nikolas Bakirtzis and Luca Zavagno

PART I - Theory and Historiography

1 The Byzantine City and its Historiography

Luca Zavagno

2 Theorizing Byzantine Urbanity: The City Constituting Memory, Memory Constituting the City

Myrto Veikou

3 The Byzantine City in the Literary Sources

Helen Saradi

4 Methodologies for Byzantine Urban Studies

Michael J. Decker

5 Spatial Organization in Late Byzantine Cities (13th・14th Centuries)

Tonia Kiousopoulou

PART II - Geographies of the Byzantine City

6 Cities on the Black Sea Coast and the Circumpontic Exchange Network (c. 500・700)

Andrei Gandila

7 The Byzantine ‘City’ in Asia Minor

Ufuk Serin

8 Insular Urbanism in Byzantium

Luca Zavagno

9 The City in the Byzantine ‘Italies’

Enrico Cirelli

10 Urbanism in Syria and Palestine Between the 7th and 9th Centuries

Ian Randall

PART III - Architecture and the Built Environment

11 Domes in the Urban Skyline: The Case of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus and its Transformations through Time

Nikolaos Karydis

12 Fortifications and the Making of the Byzantine City

Nikolas Bakirtzis

13 Monumentality and the Byzantine City

Maria Cristina Carile

14 Maintained, Stored and Protected: Water and the Byzantine City

E. Giorgi

15 Islamic City, Ottoman City: Byzantine Prousa to Ottoman Bursa

Suna Cağaptay

16 Two Views of Ports and Maritime Communities in the Byzantine Mediterranean: Constantinople and Amalfi

Michael Jones and Matthew Harpster

17 Alexandria after Antiquity: A City in Transition

Athanasios Koutoupas

PART IV - Daily Life, Visual and Material Culture

18 “The Arts and the Byzantine City”

Ioli Kalavrezou

19 On Early Byzantine Images of Poleis: Meanings and Messages

Jenny P. Albani

20 The Consumptive Capital: Commercial Activities and Ceramic Finds at Constantinople (ca. 500・1000)

Joanita Vroom

21 Pera Ianuensium Pulcherrima Civitas Est: Creating a Genoese Identity on the Golden Horn (1261・1453)

Mabi Angar