Why does medieval Rome look so, for lack of a better word, Byzantine? Why do its monuments speak an aesthetic of the medieval East? And just how do we quantify that Byzantine aesthetic or even the word Byzantine ?

This book seeks to consider the ways in which the artistic styles and iconographies generally associated with the eastern medieval tradition had a life in the West and, in many cases, were just as western as they were eastern. Rome’s medieval monuments are a fundamental part of the history of the East, a history that says more about a cross- cultural exchange and interconnected Romes than difference and separation.

Each chapter follows the political and theological relationships between the East and the West chronologically, exploring the socio-political exchanges as they manifest in the visual language of the monuments that defined the medieval landscape of Rome.