This Companion explores Constantinople…examining its urban infrastructure & the administrative, social, religious, & cultural institutions that gave the city life, it also considers visitors encounters with its urban reality & its place in imagination
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A new portrait of the famous conqueror and liberator - the Roman Emperor Nikephoros Phokas!

He was the first of the three great warrior emperors who brought the Romans to their medieval peak of power in 1025. Nikephoros Phokas - John Tzimiskes - Basil II.

Artist: Darko Stojanovic

“Enclosed by a circuit of walls, Constantinople might best be pictured as an impenetrable island fortress which in a pre-gunpowder age could be taken only through the negligence or connivance of the city’s inhabitants.”

-Eric McGreer

Emperor of the Romans, Nikephoros II Phokas - liberator of Crete and Cyprus, Pale Death of the Saracens, and the restorer of Roman might in the Mediterranean.

Oil on cardboard, 33 x 41 cm. The original is for sale, please DM me if interested.

#roman #byzantine #constantinople

“It is often asserted today that the deposition of Romulus Augustulus was a ‘non-event’ that hardly anyone noticed…and that ‘476’ did not begin to mark something as dramatic as ‘the end of the western empire’ until writers at the court of Justinian began to treat it that way.”

The Pantheon is arguably the greatest intact temple of Ancient Rome today.

The Hagia Sophia is the greatest church ever constructed in Constantinople (“New Rome”)

Both are splendid domed places of worship, converted in faith from their original purpose.

Both still amaze us!

The Pantheon is arguably the greatest intact temple of Ancient Rome today.

The Hagia Sophia is the greatest church ever constructed in Constantinople (“New Rome”)

Both are splendid domed places of worship, converted in faith from their original purpose.

Both still amaze us!

“Fusing the spices of the Romans with the seafood & simple local food of the Aegean & Greek world, the cuisine of the Byzantines was unique and a precursor to much of the food of modern Turkey & Greece.”

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Visitors to Palaiologan Constantinople noticed the desolation and ruins in the City. Betrandon in 1432 wrote that “This city of Constantinople is made up of villages; there is much more open space than buildings.”

Even a century earlier a Latin visitor named Brocardus, the

Many nations take pride in their baklava tradition! In “Byzantine” cuisine there is something remarkably similar - Koptoplakous.

“This tradition is a much loved one; there is a plethora of dishes favored by Arabs, Greeks, Turks, Persians and Slavs, in particular. Such

Many nations take pride in their baklava tradition! In “Byzantine” cuisine there is something remarkably similar - Koptoplakous.

“This tradition is a much loved one; there is a plethora of dishes favored by Arabs, Greeks, Turks, Persians and Slavs, in particular. Such

A map of Ottoman Constantinople in 1572