The book is the result of many years of work by the author on various sources (legislative, narrative, archaeological, etc.) related to the history of Byzantium - the heiress of Rome, one of the most brilliant and tragically dead traditions of the Middle Ages. Collected bit by bit materials introduce the reader into the world of the everyday and therefore little-known side of the life of the Roman Empire from the moment of its emergence until its heyday in the 9th - 10th centuries. and for the first time allow you to recreate the world of the Byzantine shopkeeper, merchant, artisan, namely: the spatial, historical, environmental and organizational structure of trade and craft objects. It visibly appears in the form of urban retail space - markets, quarters, rows, other "outlets," shops - workshops, trade and warehouse, hotel facilities, fairs - panigirs and allows you to re-evaluate the state of Byzantine society in the era of transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages, including in difficult and largely mysterious VII-VIII centuries, usually called the "dark time."