Seldom are new discoveries made in the course of an otherwise routine restoration project. Yet that is precisely what has happened within a small jewel box of a chapel on the grounds of the great Abbey of Chaalis, 50 kilometers northeast of Paris. There, architects and restorers working to salvage...Read more
Amid Rome’s often dizzying chaos, the “Cimitero Acattolico” or Cemetery for Non-Catholics in Testaccio is a particularly tranquil spot. At the top of the hill, near the grave of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, the scents of pine needles and jasmine flowers intertwine to perfume the air which is...Read more
Dorothy “Dot” Phillips, a 76-year-old resident of Bay St. Louis, Mis - sissippi, is the consummate hostess, even while entertaining in a place that is not, strictly speaking, her home. On a fiercely hot June afternoon she’s serving coffee and cookies to a small group that includes Marty Hylton, the...Read more
A s one of the world’s oldest civilizations, India has been influenced over the centuries by cultures from around the globe. From the Roman remains in Arikameddu to the Mughal architecture of the sixteenth-century Emperor Akbar and the distinctive urbanism of French, British, and Portuguese...Read more
A soaring plane, a surging ship, a swirling staircase. Disconnected as they may seem, these elements all come together in Asmara, capital of Africa’s newest country Eritrea, in a veritable Aladdin’s Cave of architectural riches. The symbolism characterizes the eclectic buildings of this...Read more
The soft glow of butter lamps illuminates Lama Tsering as he blesses a bundle of prayer flags, aspersing them with rose water and grains of white rice. Clad in a saffron robe and enveloped in a cloud of juniper incense, he prays for the success of our mission, his rhythmic chant punctuated by the...Read more
In the chilly early spring of 1889, two dozen sunburned and wiry mine workers in western Colorado started moving the San Miguel River, damming portions of the waterway and sending it into a new wooden flume, a narrow chute used to channel water. Some 80 million gallons of water a day were slated to...Read more
On the morning of May 27, 2006, an earthquake registering 6.2 on the Richter Scale and lasting just under a minute rocked Indonesia. Its epicenter was just 20 kilometers southeast of the historic center of Yogyakarta. The famed eighth-century Buddhist temple of Borobudur, a World Heritage Site some...Read more
The sliver of Rome that stretches across the Caelian Hill between the Basilica of St. John Lataran and the Colosseum is as historically significant as it is chaotic—a cacophony of whirring mopeds and rattling Fiats rumbling past tourists streaming between archeological treasures and locals going...Read more
At a time when there is much discussion about landscape as art, the Endless Column Complex by Romanian sculptor Constantine Brancusi (1876–1957) holds particular significance for the field of landscape architecture. Completed in 1938, the tripartite ensemble—composed of the Endless Column, a 30-...Read more