Late Byzantine bridges as markers of imagined landscapes

Bridges provide safe passage over natural obstacles, primarily over rivers. They form an integral part of hydraulic landscapes and define territories and boundaries. The physical appearance of bridges as structures overwhelming and even ‘humiliating’ the river has granted them symbolic meanings as triumphal monuments visualizing the conquest of a river and the expansion of state territory, or as a liminal space between opposed worlds. This paper investigates the significance of Late Byzantine bridges (1204–1453) as an architectural and cultural phenomenon. It examines built structures, as well as imagined representations in visual and written sources, in an interdisciplinary framework. The discussion of Byzantine bridges and their comparison to Seljuk and Ottoman monuments emphasizes the significance of this particular class of monument as an expression of power and as a defining element of hydraulic landscapes — both real and imagined.