The Granite Hermitages of the Pyrenees: Deciphering the Romanesque Proportions and Lombard Bands of the Vall de Boí Wedged between the sheer granite walls of Alta Ribagorça in the Catalan Pyrenees, the Vall de Boí preserves the densest concentration of Romanesque architecture surviving in Europe — nine churches and one […]
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The Etruscan Trench: The Spatial Planning and Defensive Logic of the Vie Cave Architecture Carved deep into the volcanic tuff of southern Tuscany, the vie cave are among the most physically arresting architectural achievements of the Etruscan world — sunken corridors whose walls rise ten, twenty, sometimes thirty metres above […]
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The Built Ridge: Deciphering the Military Engineering and Volcanic Foundations of Sorano and Pitigliano Few landscapes in Italy make the relationship between geology and defensive architecture as legible as the tufa ridge of southern Tuscany. At Sorano and Pitigliano, volcanic rock laid down by eruptions hundreds of thousands of years […]
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The Single Span: Deciphering the Gothic Engineering and Geometry of Girona Cathedral In the old city of Girona, a Baroque facade at the top of ninety stone steps conceals one of the most radical structural decisions in the history of medieval architecture. Behind that facade stretches a single uninterrupted vault […]
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