Illustrated encyclopedia of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. A colossal amount of information, more than 1000 color reproductions, maps and photographs. But this is not a boring academic work that makes you sleepy, but a fascinating biography of a thousand-year-old Power that reads like an exciting novel! The history of the Roman Empire did not end in 476 AD. Yes, the “Eternal City” itself fell under the onslaught of the barbarian hordes - but the Eastern Roman Empire survived for another thousand years! The Middle Ages were “dark” only in unwashed barbarian Europe - and in Byzantium the light of true faith and high culture shone: for many centuries the Second Rome was the most developed, educated and advanced power in the world. It is not for nothing that in Rus' Constantinople was called Constantinople, and the West has always envied this great Empire and hated it. Savage “crusaders” ravaged the Second Rome two centuries before the Muslims, the looted treasures became the pride of European museums and churches, and the history of Byzantium is still falsified to justify the crimes of their ancestors... This book not only restores the truth, but also proves the last defenders of Constantinople to be right , who went to their deaths with the belief that their Empire would rise from the dead, like a phoenix from the ashes, that the greatness of the Second Rome would be restored by “the fair-haired people who would descend from the north,” and that the Orthodox Cross would shine again on Hagia Sophia. And with the rise of Rus', this legend took on meaning, becoming a centuries-old dream and national idea of the Russian people. We are the only inheritors of this 1000-year-old civilization. Constantinople is our spiritual Motherland, which showed humanity a “special path” between East and West. Constantinople is the Second Rome. Russia is the Third. There won't be a Fourth!