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Byzantium

The Roman empire that lasted another thousand years and gets a different name.

10: briefs
4: subjects
7:19: average
73 min: in total

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history.briefs History

All 3 in history →

13:00

Byzantine Empire

395–1453

The Byzantine Empire was the continuation of the Roman state centred on Constantinople after the western empire's collapse, reaching its greatest extent under Justinian in the sixth century, surviving devastating territorial losses to Arab conquest in the seventh century, and enduring in reduced form until the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Historians disagree on when to date its beginning, and note that the empire's own inhabitants never called themselves Byzantine, a label applied only after the state had ceased to exist.

13:00

Fall of Constantinople

6 April – 29 May 1453

Ottoman forces under the nineteen-year-old Mehmed II besieged Constantinople for fifty-three days before breaching its ancient walls on 29 May 1453, ending over a thousand years of Byzantine imperial continuity. Defenders numbering fewer than eight thousand faced an Ottoman force contemporaries estimated anywhere from fifty thousand to three hundred thousand, a discrepancy that has never been resolved, while massive gunpowder cannon, one reportedly capable of firing six-hundred-pound projectiles over a mile, demonstrated that the era of medieval fortification was ending.

13:00

Venice

Founded 421

Venice's founding legend puts a precise date, noon on 25 March 421, on a process that in fact unfolded over generations, as people from Roman towns on the mainland retreated into the lagoon ahead of successive invasions. What followed was thirteen centuries of maritime power built on trade with Byzantium and the eastern Mediterranean, a republic that ended when Napoleon took the city in 1797, and a modern afterlife defined by tourism, subsidence, and a flood barrier still not finished decades after it was meant to be.

culture.briefs Culture

All 1 in culture →

10:40

Icon painting in Ukraine

Ukraine’s icon tradition didn’t survive by staying still—it bent, borrowed, and rebuilt itself across ten centuries.

food.briefs Food

All 4 in food →

1:13

Baklava

A layered pastry dessert of filo, chopped nuts, and syrup or honey.

1:26

Kofta

Kofta is a family of meatball and meatloaf dishes across South Asian, Central Asian, Balkan, Middle Eastern, North African, and South Caucasian cuisines.

1:09

Simit

A ring-shaped sesame-encrusted bread with Byzantine roots, now widespread across former Ottoman regions.

0:53

Souvlaki

Small pieces of meat—and sometimes vegetables—grilled on a skewer, originating in Greece.

fashion.briefs Fashion

All 2 in fashion →

10:22

Burqa

A garment that proves modesty has never been exclusively Muslim—and never required the face to disappear.

8:22

Gianni Versace

Versace founded an international luxury-fashion house producing diverse consumer goods; designed costumes for theatre and film; linked fashion to the music world; used vivid colours, bold prints and sexy cuts as a deliberate contrast to dominant minimalist aesthetics; combined luxurious classicism with overt sexuality, drawing both criticism and praise; rejected conventional notions of good taste and defied fashion rules; drew design inspiration from historical periods including Classicism, Byzantium, the 18th century, and the 1920s–1930s; reimagined historical elements like Ravenna's mosaics and Roman drapery for contemporary fashion; and was born and raised in Reggio di Calabria, with his career spanning 1946–1997.