The Post-Byzantine Monuments of the Pontos

The Post-Byzantine Monuments of the Pontos Synopsis

This volume makes available a unique record of the post-Byzantine architecture and buildings - churches primarily, but also monasteries, bridges and schools - of the Pontos, the north-eastern coastlands of Anatolia. The region enjoyed two great periods of prosperity, first expressed in the richness of its buildings from the time of the Empire of Trebizond (1204-1461), and second in its no less remarkable but barely-known post-Byzantine monuments. This Pontic revival began in the 18th century, under the patronage of the silver-miners and bishops of Chaldia and flourished after the Trebizond-Tabriz route was opened to Western trade from 1829. It ended abruptly with the departure of the Pontic Greeks in 1923. In the 1950s-1970s the authors recorded several hundreds of abandoned monuments in 68 settlements in the former dioceses of Amasia, Neoceasarea, Chaldia, Trebizond and Rhodopolis, which since then have further deteriorated, if not disappeared. These accounts and illustrations, reproduced here from the original photographs, are therefore now often the only record of these astonishing buildings. The monuments are placed within their Ottoman social and economic context and their history illuminated by archival material, such as British consular reports from Trebizond.