Gilbert Dagron, Russian pilgrims in Constantinople. Russian pilgrims who visited Constantinople in the Middle Ages were tourists who were guided and sometimes deceived; deprived of critical sense, they believed and repeated what they were being told. They were heirs of the Byzantine culture, better prepared than some others to understand what they were being shown: magical statues, relics of Old and New Testament that gave to Constantinople the status of a New Jerusalem; icons, sources of "usual" miracles, spectacular liturgies... Their admiration was made in part of a rediscovery of what they had formerly read and heard about the wonders of the city. But the narration of Russian pilgrims lacks in depth what lends to the urban legends of Byzantium their occult meaning and provocative value.