The book is one of four volumes devoted to the history and culture of Tauric Chersonesos in the ancient and medieval era, the publication of which was conceived and carried out by the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the National Reserve "Tauric Chersonesos." It considers different aspects of the political, administrative, social, economic life, material and spiritual culture of the Chersonites during the early Middle Ages (second half of the 6th - first half of the 10th centuries), when the city was part of the Byzantine Empire and at the same time was in difficult relations with other neighboring peoples, in particular, with Goths, Alans, Turks, dew, mighty, mysterious Khazaria. After reading this study, you can find that some of the previous provisions are beginning to look new. In particular, it is proposed to see a Byzantine-Khazar condominium in Taurica, and in Kherson a loyal Romance center, very far from self-government. Considerable attention in the monograph is paid to the search for the manifestation of Byzantine church rites in the life of the city and the clarification of its topography, urbanonyms, agoronyms. At the same time, a new, sometimes unexpected interpretation of a number of monuments is proposed. Being a fundamental generalizing scientific work, the book retained polemics, amusement, accessibility and brightness of presentation, which are combined with the latest achievements of science. Therefore, it can be addressed not only to specialists, historians, archaeologists, teachers of universities and schools, but also to the entire cultural community interested in the medieval history of Ukraine. To a large extent, this is helped by the presence in the book of an appendix containing commented translations of the most valuable written sources interesting for the history of early medieval Byzantine Kherson, published in rare, and therefore inaccessible to a wide circle of readers, academic publications.