“As its title suggests, From the Ancient Near East to Christian Byzantium: Kings, Symbols, and Cities traces the history of Christian Byzantium through a meticulous examination of the origins of specific ancient cities, and the symbolic import of their art and monuments as perceived by their rulers or kings. To this end, Dr Baghos takes us on a detailed and highly evocative journey through the ancient cities, beginning in Mesopotamia, reputedly seat of the oldest cultures in the world, then travelling through Egypt, Greece, Israel and ultimately to Rome and Constantinople (or ‘new Rome’, as it was called). […] [This] is a uniquely informative, inspiring and captivating book that you will treasure for years to come. I recommend it unreservedly to both academics and the general reader, all of whom will find themselves the richer for reading it.”Denise O’HaganKosmos Newspaper, August 2021“This informative and original book deserves a wide readership. [It] the book succeeds in making a large and rather amorphous subject—the transformations of sacred space and sacred agency through some five thousand years of antiquity—interesting and intelligible. Orthodox readers will find it particularly valuable for its focus on Constantinople and the special relationship between the old and the New Rome.”David BradshawProfessor of Philosophy, University of Kentucky; Review for the International Orthodox Theological Association“Dr Baghos’ analysis is not only novel but also historically important. The relationship he painstakingly and cogently delineates as existing between Kings, Symbols and Cities in Byzantium, endured in various forms and permutations in Europe and in all lands dominated by Europeans, up to the end of the First World War. Dr Baghos brilliantly opens up a whole new field for research and analysis. How were the Byzantine conceptions of Kings, Symbols and Cities appropriated by European civilisations and subsequently employed to support a discourse of colonialism and imperialism? How did such conceptions disrupt, alter or influence the native understanding of the axis mundi in Africa, Asia and America? […] An erudite and scholarly appraisal of the diachronic evolution of sacred architecture, “Kings, Symbols and Cities,” remains eminently approachable and digestible. It is a must read for all of those who seek to comprehend the complex relationship civilisations have to architecture and the celestial.”Dean KalimniouReview for Neos Kosmos