This volume collects papers by distinguished European scholars, on the changing perception of the city in the period of transition from the Roman World to the Early Middle Ages. Central themes are the persistence of classical ideals of urban life, within a rapidly-changing world, and the emergence of a new ideal of the city that was specifically Christian.

Gian Pietro Brogiolo teaches Medieval Archaeology at the University of Padua. His interests are in towns and countryside of early medieval Italy, and he has excavated extensively in Lombardy, particularly at Brescia and Monte Barro. He has published numerous articles on the cities of Byzantine and Lombard Italy, and is the author of Brescia altomedievale. Urbanistica ed edilizia dal IV al IX secolo (1993).
Bryan Ward-Perkins is a Lecturer in Medieval History at Oxford University and a Fellow of Trinity College. He has published extensively on the towns of early medieval Italy and is the author of From Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Urban Public Building in Northern and Central Italy (1984). He is an editor of the Cambridge Ancient History Volume XIV.