Constantinople real and imaginary (330-1204) - Colloquium March 22-24 

From his thesis on The Birth of a Capital. Constantinople et ses institutions, de 330 à 451 (1974), to L'Hippodrome de Constantinople. Jeux, peuple et politique (Gallimard, 2011), the emblematic capital of the Byzantine empire and world has held a central place in the work of Gilbert Dagron (1932- AIBL 1994-2015). He explored every aspect of the city: political, economic, social and religious. Above all, he explored the relationship between the city and its medieval inhabitants in an innovative and unparalleled book, his Constantinople imaginaire. Études sur le recueil des Patria (1984), then in L'Hippodrome. Building on these achievements and in the light of recent research and discoveries, such as the spectacular wrecks of the Theodosian port, the presentations will return to the themes of Constantinople's urbanism and topography, its inhabitants and their cultures, the capital's relations with foreign countries, its symbolism and its imaginary.