Ambition and Architecture from Ancient Rome to Modern Paris
What links Kubilai Khan and Catherine the Great, Renaissance popes and Fascist dictators? Apart from their predilections for power, and answer is that they all understood how public architecture could be a tremendously effective personal statement.
In this absorbing and revealing book Adrian Tinniswood explores a wide range of spectacular creations - from the temples of the Egyptian pharaohs to today's hi-tech corporate headquarters, proving an acessible, informative and highly entertaining account of some of the greatest buildings the world has ever seen and the colourful figures who created them.
- For each building or development featured, the personal motivation, inspiration and influences, planning and construction are described in detail.
- Themed chapters include Gods, Kings and Emperiors (Hadrian's Rome, Akhenaten and the Hoizon of the Sun Disc), Palaces of Power (Catherine the Great's palace at Tsarskoe Selo, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello), The Great Dictators (Hitler's Berlin, Stalin's Moscow) and Prestige in a Democratic Age (Mitterand's Paris, Prince Charles's Poundbury village).
- Over 200 images illustrate the buildings as they were (in contemporary prints and paintings), as they are now, and the rulers who built them.
