In his highly acclaimed reference work David Watkin traces the history of western architecture from the earliest times in Mesopotamia and Egypt to the eclectic styles of the twenty-first century. The author emphasizes the ongoing vitality of the Classical language of architecture, underlining the continuity between, say, the work of Ictinus in fifth-century BC Athens and that of McKim, Mead and White in twentieth-century New York.

CONTENTS:

1. The Classical Foundation: Greek, Hellenistic, Roman
THE BRONZE AGE HERITAGE
THE HELLENISTIC BACKGROUND
THE RISE OF ROME

2. Early Christian and Byzantine
   Rome
   Constantinople, Salonica and Ravenna
   Later Byzantine Architecture

3. Carolingian and Romanesque
   The Rise of Monasticism
   Britain and Spain from the Ninth to the Early Eleventh Century
   Ottonian Architecture and Its Influence
   France in the Tenth and Early Eleventh Centuries
   Normandy and England in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
   The Pilgrimage Churches of France and Spain
   Cluny III and the Provincial Schools of French Romanesque
   Spain in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
   Italy

4. The Gothic Experiment
FRANCE
ENGLAND
GERMANY AND CENTRAL EUROPE, BELGIUM, ITALY, SPAIN, PORTUGAL

5. Renaissance Harmony
THE BIRTH OF THE RENAISSANCE
HIGH RENAISSANCE
THE RENAISSANCE OUTSIDE ITALY

6. Baroque Expansion
ITALY
BAROQUE OUTSIDE ITALY

7. Eighteenth-Century Classicism
THE IMPACT OF ROME
THE RISE OF NEO-CLASSICISM IN FRANCE
THE CLASSICAL TRADITION ELSEWHER IN EUROPE
THE RISE OF CLASSICISM IN THE USA

8. The Nineteenth Century
FRANCE
BRITAIN
GERMANY, AUSTRIA AND ITALY
SCANDINAVIA, RUSSIA AND GREECE
BELGIUM AND HOLLAND
USA

9. Art Nouveau
BELGIUM AND FRANCE
SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND
GERMANY, AUSTRIA AND ITALY
SPAIN

10. The Twentieth Century
USA UP TO 1939
EUROPE UP TO 1939
MODERNISM AFTER 1945
POST-MODERNISM