Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium Episode 271, Twilight Cities with

Catherine Pancones.

Today is an interview with author Catherine Pancones about her new book, Twilight Cities,

Lost Capitals of the Mediterranean.

You may remember Catherine from Episode 238 where we spoke about her previous book,

Queens of Jerusalem.

She also returned to talk about the devastating earthquakes that hit Turkey in February

2023.

In Twilight Cities, she travels to Tyre, Carthage, Syracuse, Ravenna and Antioch to tell

the stories of these forgotten capitals and to experience what remains today.

This book is something I think you'll all be interested in.

The history of these places is so fascinating and Catherine takes you through their heyday,

pre-the-take-over by Roman then Constantinople, but then she rolls into the Roman Byzantine

Islamic and Crusader eras.

So you get a whole-potid history of the place.

And if like me, you dream about Mediterranean holidays where you could actually visit some

of the places from your history books, then this is definitely for you.

Your standard guide book won't tell you where to find the ruins, the lost treasures,

and the hills where heroes once stood.

So thank God Catherine is here to help.

In the interview, I ask her to skip the stuff that we know well, which she does cover in

the book, and instead to tell us about the things that are less familiar, and also to

...