Research websites

The website brings together all sites related to the study of Byzantium and the Latin dominions in the Greek territories.

Aiming to highlight the historical continuity of Athens, the National Hellenic Research Foundation organized a series of twelve lectures under the title “Archaeology of the City of Athens”. Twelve expert scholars presented major topics concerning the history of Athens’ urban and suburban landscape, from prehistoric times to the modern era. The portal constitutes the digital publication of this project, featuring substantial additions — including newly written chapters, excerpts from historical sources, and a rich collection of illustrative material.
The portal of the research project "Kyrtou Plegmata" includes applications for the study, documentation, and interpretive mapping of the structure and functions of various networks that developed historically, investigating their impact on the formation of the respective conceptualizations of the Greek space.

PANDEKTIS

Digital Treasury of Primary Sources on Greek History and Culture

PANDEKTIS includes major digital collections on Greek history and culture created by the National Hellenic Research Foundation. These collections originate from the Institutes of Neohellenic Research, Byzantine Research, and Greek and Roman Antiquity (actual Institute of Historical Research) and have been digitized and made available online by the National Documentation Centre. The collections contain information on historical and cultural heritage that can be of value both to the scholarly community and to the general public.
The “Byzantine History Database” is an ongoing project of the SBR/IHR. It is the result of in-depth scholarly processing of more than one hundred Greek and Latin texts to date and aims to create a significant tool for research and support of the educational process.
The database “Western Religious Orders in the Aegean, the Ionian, and Cyprus (11th–19th centuries)” aims to: (a) map for the first time the extent, density, and diversity of the establishments of Western religious orders in these regions from the 11th century to 1830, the year of Greek independence; and (b) collect and present the essential bibliographical documentation concerning these establishments. The data have been drawn primarily from the scholarly literature and published sources, as well as from unpublished archival material.
The database records, in diplomatic transcription, the texts of Greek post-Byzantine documents preserved in the archives of the Athonite monasteries. At this stage, it includes all the documents from the monasteries of Esphigmenou and Stavronikita, as well as selected ones from Pantokrator, Xeropotamou, and Karakallou. The database will gradually be enriched with the complete corpus of documents from the remaining monasteries.
The database records the notes found in manuscripts of the Monastery of Patmos that have been published in the catalogues of its collection issued to date and, as a final stage, it aims to develop it into a thesaurus of primary historical evidence from the collections of the monastery, with the addition of historical information in its published documents.
The churches built during the Byzantine period are the ones still standing today in the historic center of Athens and beyond. Many of these churches are featured on the website Byzantine Monuments of Attica”. Alongside the churches, a selection of frescoes, sculptures, mosaics, inscriptions, as well as rare and unpublished material from the British School at Athens (drawings and photographs by 19th-century British architects) are presented here to encourage on-site visits.
In the ever-growing scholarly interest in studying aspects of the material culture of past societies, research on ceramics has experienced remarkable growth. The study of glazed vessels immured in churches of various areas of Greece offers an important tool for gaining deeper insight into this rich facet of material culture found throughout the Greek world, as the material itself forms a kind of open-air museum for medieval and post-medieval glazed pottery.
This database includes terms related to bookbinding and to the description of the codex as a physical object. It is organized into sections corresponding to the structure of the book, and each term is accompanied by an explanatory text in Greek and a translation of the term only into English.
The database “Chrysothemis” consists of entries concerning methods of food preparation in Byzantium, mainly of the Byzantine recipes, cooked food called mageiriai. Some of the relevant comments are extended studies investigating food preparation and standard of living over time and making comparisons not only among various social classes, but also among various ethnic and religious groups within and beyond the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire.

Domestic and Wild Fauna in the Greek Space

Written Testimonies and Archaelogical Sources (8th-15th C.)

The research examines the role of domestic animals and wild fauna in everyday life. It aims to approach the subject from geographical, historical, and environmental perspectives, focusing on the collection of data concerning the perception and use of wild animals, the breeding and exploitation of domestic animals and livestock, as well as activities such as fishing, apiculture, and hunting.