How many of us know that Italy, the epicenter of Roman Catholicism, is home to some of the most exquisite and beautiful Byzantine churches in the world, as well as churches heavily influenced by Byzantine culture?
The Italian peninsula is...
Kastoria is a beautiful lakeside city in northwestern Greece famous for its fur and leather trade and its rich history that goes as far back as Byzantium
A new analysis of nearly 300,000 kilometers of ancient roads has found that Byzantium (Greek: Βυζάντιον), later known as Constantinople, occupied a more important position than Rome as a major hub for land travel across the Roman Empire. The...
One of history’s greatest ironies is that the Renaissance in Europe, a movement celebrated for reviving the classical wisdom of ancient Greece, was fueled by a deep-seated hatred and contempt for Byzantium and its people. This paradox—the wholehearted embrace...
Those who are familiar with the Emperors of Byzantium know they were often spoken of as "purple-born," a phrase that has, understandably, sparked some wild representations of these powerful rulers of the Byzantine Empire over the centuries. This has...
The final centuries of the Byzantine Empire gave rise to numerous remarkable communities among which stood the Gasmouloi, a people caught between two civilizations. While they had both Greek and Latin ancestry, they were not fully accepted by either...
Archaeologists excavating the ancient Greek sanctuary of Apollo Smintheus in the broader area of ancient Troy in modern-day northwestern Turkey have discovered a stone mortar dating back around 1,500 years. This is providing experts with fresh evidence of the...
If the urban legends are to be believed, "The city has fallen and I am still alive" were the last, painful words of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Byzantine Emperor.
On May 29 1453, as the world of Byzantium crumbled...
The Via Egnatia was an ancient Roman road that stretched across an impressive distance between the Adriatic coast and Byzantium (modern day Istanbul) on the Bosphorous Strait. It was actually a continuation of Via Appia, one of the earliest...
