Module description
The aim of the module is to introduce students to the history, changing fortunes, monuments and artistic output of Constantinople, successor to Rome and the largest city of the medieval world.
This will be achieved through the examination of the city’s fabric, of individual monuments with their decoration, and of primary texts which shed light on important questions, with particular emphasis on the transformation of the city from Late Antiquity through the so-called dark ages and into the medieval period (4th - 15th century).
Teaching pattern
10 x 2-hour seminar (weekly)
Suggested reading list
Suggested introductory reading
This is suggested reading and purchase of these books is not mandatory.
- Dumbarton Oaks Papers 54 (2000) (acts of the 1998 Dumbarton Oaks symposium ‘Constantinople: the fabric of the city’, available online)
- P. Magdalino, Studies on the history and topography of Byzantine Constantinople, Variorum / Ashgate (Aldershot 2007).
- C. Mango, Studies on Constantinople, Variorum / Ashgate (Aldershot 1993).
- C. Mango and G. Dagron (eds.), Constantinople and its hinterland, Ashgate (Aldershot 1995).
- N. Necipoğlu (ed.), Byzantine Constantinople: Monuments, topography and everyday life, Brill (Leiden 2001).