Constantinople and Byzantine Cities

Abstract

The Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire gradually emerged in the fifth century, when the Roman Empire in the West collapsed as a result of the Germanic migration. From then until the end of the empire in the fifteenth century, Constantinople was its undisputed capital and its cultural center. Shortly after the temporary reconquest of Italy and North Africa in the sixth century, most of the Balkan Peninsula was lost to the Slavs, then in the seventh century the entire Middle East and Egypt to the Islamic Arabs. The cities in the remaining areas lost most of their inhabitants, and their urban self-government disappeared and they fell into ruins. Many of them were now reduced in size, equipped with new fortifications or moved to other, better protected locations. With the reconquest of Greece in the late eighth century and the successful defense of Asia Minor against the attacks of the Arabs, the situation slowly improved. The cities slowly began to grow again, but they never regained the size and economic strength of late antiquity. Urban representative buildings were now practically limited to churches, monasteries, and occasionally small noble palaces. Only a few cities attained greater importance than in antiquity for economic or military reasons, and new cities were only built in exceptional cases. The territory of the empire shrank again when Asia Minor was lost to the Turks after 1071 and only partially reconquered. In the twelfth century, contacts with Western Europe grew strongly as a result of the Crusades. Foreigners, especially Italian merchants, were now permanently present in Constantinople. The continuing dominance of the imperial court and government in the capital, however, prevented the emergence of a self-confident urban bourgeoisie, as in Italy at the same time, and the economic development associated with it. When Constantinople and parts of the empire were conquered by the knights of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, new residential cities on the periphery emerged, such as Nikaia and Trebizond in Asia Minor, Arta in western Greece, and later also Mystras in the Peloponnese. In the late Byzantine period, after the reconquest of Constantinople in 1261, Thessalonica played an important role as the second city in the empire, while Athens never returned to Byzantine possession. The history of the Byzantine cities ends with the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453, and of the last remaining territories in the following years. Due to the large amount of material, only selected cities in the areas that still belonged to the Byzantine Empire after the seventh century will be considered in this article.