Architecture Essays: Reading Italian Places

The whole old town of Matera seen from across a gorge: cream stone houses climbing to a bell tower on the skyline, above green slopes and limestone outcrops

Essay

MATERA — THE CAVE CITY THAT WAS A DISGRACE, THEN A WONDER

In 1952 Italy emptied the caves of Matera as a national disgrace. Today they are hotels, film sets and a World Heritage Site. How the Sassi work, and who paid for the change.

The end of the Colosseum's outer ring, where a tall sloping wedge of brick with a small white inscription props up three storeys of travertine arches filled with brickwork, with two worn ston

Exactly

WHO RESTORED THE COLOSSEUM?

Two brick buttresses with two opposite ideas of restoration, a shoe entrepreneur, and an arena floor that isn't there yet. Two centuries of Colosseum restoration, before and after.

An etching of huge ruined vaults: on the left two tiers of brick arches, in the middle and on the right three enormous coffered barrel vaults open to the sky, with plants growing on top, work

Exactly

WHY DOES ROMAN CONCRETE LAST?

It was not stronger than ours. It was made of volcanic ash, quicklime and patience, and there was no iron in it. Why Roman concrete is still standing.

Black-and-white aerial photograph of a new town on a flat plain: pale buildings around a large open square with a tall tower, a big church at the bottom right, and straight roads running out

Architecture

THE PLAN

Latina and Sabaudia, Brasília, Chandigarh: cities a state drew on a blank sheet of paper, and the real city that grew where the paper ended. Chapter IV of Utopian Cities, with a detour to Louis Kahn's parliament in Dhaka.

A narrow Venetian canal between two rows of palaces, with mooring poles on the left and, on the right, a palace whose bare brick base sits on a band of white stone at the waterline

Exactly

HOW IS VENICE BUILT ON WATER?

It does not float, it does not stand on long piles, and the wood has not turned to stone. What is really under a Venetian house, from the brick down to the caranto

The Colosseum at dusk seen from the south, two tiers of lit arches belonging to the inner rings, with the solid top storey of the far side rising behind them

Exactly

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE COLOSSEUM?

It isn't half missing, it wasn't one earthquake, and the popes came last. Soft ground under the south side, lime kilns, a licensed quarry, and the Colosseum that Gladiator built in Malta.

A long stone power station with battlements on the far bank of a wide, still green river, with the square tower of a castle rising behind it among trees.

Architecture

THE COMPANY TOWN

A sleeping-car maker builds a town south of Chicago, a cotton manufacturer a village on the Adda, Henry Ford a rubber town in the Amazon. Chapter III of Utopian Cities: the company town, and what is left of it once the company no longer needs it.

A sepia photograph of the bay at Baiae: in the middle the broken walls of a large ruined building with tall arched openings, on the left a half-dome set against the hill, a few low white hous

Exactly

HOW WAS ROMAN CONCRETE MADE?

Burn the limestone, slake it or don't, add volcanic ash and pack it in with rubble. How Roman concrete was made, from Vitruvius to the walls still standing.

17th-century etching of a vast forecourt seen from the palace: an octagonal fountain, carriages and crowds behind a curved railing, two great horseshoe-shaped buildings beyond, and a straight

Architecture

ALL ROADS LEAD TO THE KING

Three avenues converge on the palace at Versailles, some thirty streets fan out from a tower at Karlsruhe, and a prefect cuts boulevards through Paris. Cities laid out for power, who paid the bill, and why Paris is still one of the best cities to walk in.

A road of worn polygonal paving stones runs straight away between grass verges, cypresses and umbrella pines; on the right a stone house with a tiled roof and a cascade of purple wisteria

Exactly

HOW WERE ROMAN ROADS BUILT?

Every book answers with four layers and four Latin names. The names come from a recipe for floors. What the Romans actually did was simpler, and smarter.

Pienza on its ridge seen from a green wheat field below, with cypresses, the palaces and the cathedral bell tower against the sky

Architecture

PIENZA — THE POPE WHO BUILT A CITY TO ENJOY THE VIEW

A pope goes back to the village where he was born and turns it into a city in three years: a trapezoid square, a street that hides its end, a church sliding towards the valley, and a palace built only for looking.

The Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale by Sverre Fehn, its roof of slender concrete ribs above a wooden library structure

Architecture

THE VENICE BIENNALE — DO WE REALLY WANT TO GO IN?

In 2004, off the night train, Venice filled our eyes so much that we asked ourselves whether we really wanted to go into the Biennale. Nineteen years later I have the answer: go in, for the pavilions, and come out slowly.