architecture

Ruins, Remains and Relics: Sussex

Review by Robin Hughes. Ruins, Remains and Relics: Sussex is a miscellany, organised into the three titular groups, of various historical curiosities from across the historic county of Sussex. Horlock explicitly emphasises the ‘unusual, offbeat, and decidedly quirky’, and the…

ABOVE The Altis, the sacred area of Olympia, was home to many monuments, such as here (in the foreground) the curving Philippeion, set up by Philip of Macedon after his victory over an independent Greece. Beyond is the Temple of Hera, built before the Temple of Zeus at the site.

The Changing Faces of Olympia

One of the most celebrated works of ancient Greek sculpture, Phidias’ statue of Zeus, was once housed in a temple at Olympia. Though this lost wonder was much admired by ancient visitors, it was not the only attraction at the site, for centuries the home of great panhellenic games. A new book by Judith Barringer explores the many transformations Olympia experienced, even before the creation of Phidias’ masterpiece, as David Stuttard reports.

BELOW Henry Parke (Soane office apprentice), Royal Academy lecture drawing showing a plan of Stonehenge, Wiltshire. Pen, pencil, and coloured washes on wove paper, 1817. Size: 71.3 x 129.4cm

Paper worlds and hidden masterpieces

A small selection of the thousands of drawings compiled by Regency architect Sir John Soane have gone on display in London, among them exquisite works that bring us visions of ancient monuments abroad and of unrealised splendour in England. Lucia Marchini takes a look.

Right Thomas Heatherwick’s sculpture, known as ‘Angel’s Wings’, in Paternoster Square in London provides ventilation for an underground electricity substation.

Victorian vents and Roman roads

Inventive Vents has a clever way of engaging younger people with scatological anecdotes, in the style of Horrible Histories. Thus we are told that the innocuously named Carting Lane was known colloquially as ‘Farting Lane’ because of the smell of sewer gas.

Opposite More than any other Roman arch, the Arch of Constantine has served as the model for later versions, though it is itself modelled on the Arch of Septimius Severus and consists almost entirely of decorative elements recycled from earlier monuments. This arch commemorates the decisive Battle of the Milvian Bridge (AD 312) at which Constantine defeated Maxentius to become sole emperor.

The triumphal arch: exploring the legacy of a Roman monument

Dismissed by one distinguished architectural writer as a regrettable example of Roman pomposity, ‘typical of the rather pretentious magnificence of the [Roman] Empire’, the ‘triumphal arch’ (more correctly the ‘honorary arch’) has proved to be surprisingly enduring, with a history that extends from the Roman period to the present day. Chris Catling reviews a new book by Peter Howell tracing the history of the arch through its many manifestations.

Olympia: a cultural history

Review by Paul Christesen Olympia is not an especially large archaeological site (the entire excavated area measures less than 1km on a side), but it is nonetheless a particularly complex one. Activity at the site began in the 4th millennium…

K1

This week: Anthony Kersting

Taken in the 1940s, Kersting's powerful black-and-white pictures document life among the much-persecuted Yazidi community in what is now the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq. They include captivating portraits of individuals as well as stunning architectural views

OPPOSITE The three nave Alanian church of Shoana, built in the Byzantine style in the early 10th century. Karachay Cherkessia, Russian Federation. IMAGE: Alexander Svirkin

Converting the Caucasus

According to legend, a king who had been saved after being turned into a boar ordered the conversion of Armenia to Christianity. From these royal beginnings came fights between crown, clergy, and defenders of different creeds. Christoph Baumer takes us on a journey through the ecclesiastical conflicts of the Caucasus and to its magnificent early churches.

Right Head of Emperor Antoninus Pius (r. AD 138 161). Marble from Göktepe (Turkey), c.AD 138 140.

Off with their heads! The emperors of Chiragan

One of the finest collections of Roman emperors is to be found far from Rome in the Musée Saint-Raymond in Toulouse. But where did they come from, and how did such a magnificent gathering of Roman emperors come to lose their heads? The late Roman Empire was a time of growing religious intolerance. In the East, a Christian mob destroyed the Serapeum temple at Alexandria: did a similar outburst of violence take place in south-western France? Andrew Selkirk investigates.

Monasterio de Tatev Armenia 2016 10 01 DD 86 88 HDR

This week: Christianity in the Caucasus

These days, the rugged and beautiful Caucasus Mountains – which stretch almost 800 miles between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea – are sadly perhaps most closely associated with the vicious series of ethnic and territorial disputes that have flared up along Russia's troubled southeastern border since the break-up of the Soviet Union.

LEFT The exterior of Icknield Street School in Birmingham. photo: Stephen Hartland

Victorian architecture

There is a growing realisation that the solution to the climate emergency is to retrofit existing buildings, with all their embodied carbon and energy, rather than to build new ‘environmentally sustainable’ structures in place of old.

Herbert Schmalz Zenobia

Palmyra Quiz

An oasis city surrounded by Syrian desert, Palmyra was an important stop on which trade route?

Left The wall paintings on the south wall of the south aisle at St Cadoc’s church, Llancarfan, Vale of Glamorgan, with the magnificent St George in the centre and Death and the Gallant to the left. Higher up is the princess rescued by St George and her royal parents peering anxiously from the battlements of their palace. To the right is the Virgin blessing the scene beneath the shield of the probable sponsor (the Bawdrip family, of nearby Fonmon Castle), and beyond are depictions of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Lost and found: wall paintings and rood-screens in Welsh churches

In response to the Black Lives Matter protests of June 2020, influential voices within the Anglican church called for the removal of every monument and stained-glass window commemorating people connected with slavery and empire. Ideologically motivated change on such a scale might seem unprecedented, but it has happened time and again throughout history, not least in the 16th and 17th centuries when wall paintings were obliterated and rood-lofts demolished. New discoveries remind us what we have lost, as Chris Catling reports.

Rochdale

This week: Co-op architecture

Today, the Co-op group has 65,000 employees, £11bn in revenues, and thousands of shops around the country. Yes, there have been some high-profile hiccups in recent decades – but the movement which spawned it has come a long way since 21 December 1844, when a group of Rochdale textile workers pooled their savings to open a store selling basic commodities at fair prices.

Shops ‘of the plainest kind’? The architecture of England’s co-operative movement

Planners predict that our historic town and city centres will be transformed over the next decade as online shops take over from bricks-and-mortar retail outlets. But change in the High Street is nothing new. Chris Catling is reminded how we used to shop by Lynn Pearson’s recently published book on the architecture of England’s co-operative movement, winner of the Association for Industrial Archaeology’s Peter Neaverson Award for Outstanding Scholarship 2021.

Cruck Building: a survey

Crucks, curving roof timbers that in their purest form go from the ground to the apex of the roof, have long been a puzzle. They superficially appear to be a primitive form of roof framing, but we have no real…