Antiquity

This is the first in a new series of five books describing and illustrating the seminal architectural traditions of the world. "Antiquity" traces architectural history from its very beginnings until the time when the traditions that shape today's environments began to flourish. Highly illustrated, with 1,200 colour photographs and 400 drawings, the book is divided into ten sections progressing through time: West Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean, Pre-Columbian America, Hellenic Hellenes Divided; Macedonians Ascendant Etruscans and Hellenistic Romans, Imperial Rome Christianity, and Empire Rome, and New Rome; The West: Imperial Revival and the Latin Cross; and The East: Imperial Survival and the Greek Cross. More than a catalogue of buildings, in this work Tadgell provides their political, technological, social and cultural contexts and explores architecture, not only as the development of form and space but as an expression of the civilization within which it evolves. The buildings are analyzed and illustrated with photographs and drawings while the societies that produced them are brought to life through a broad selection of their artefacts.