General Conclusions

This chapter will sum up the nature and characteristics of the changes in urbanism in Byzantium show variations (in regional and sub-regional terms) which allow us to sketch different trajectories of development for the cities of the Byzantine empire. They should be pitted against each other to understand how different local needs produced different multifunctional real “urban” answers to the problems and challenges which presented themselves along with the ebbs and flows of the history of an Empire that would not die and indeed managed to navigate through streams of gold and rivers of blood until it fell (but not for the last time) with the Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople.