In guide book format, a cultural historian pleasantly investigates the artistic legacy of Byzantium as evidenced in Ravenna, Rome, Milan, Venice, and down to southern Italy and Sicily. Although conquered in 1453, Constaninople continued to exert the same generative force for the Moslem world that it had put at the service of Christianity for over a thousand years. In frescoes and mosaics, Byzantine iconography found its way into the underground Christian world world of catacombs and basilicas. During the early Renaissance, the distinctive Oriental style of the East had its high period irrespective of the cleavage that had taken place between the Eastern and Western churches. The author annotates and illuminates what is to be seen in the Vatican or state and municipal museums, or, more agreeably, what can be found in village churches, hermits' caves or mountaintop monasteries, and there are maps as well as 83 halftone illustrations.