Old-Time Marvels

Architecture, Beauty

I recently saw this SOTI:

…and I was immediately reminded of a pic of some medieval town I’d seen at C.W.’s place a while back, which triggered a similar response from me:

Add “Without aerial photography or observation”  to the above list.

I don’t know how they did it, but they did, and it’s wonderful.  I stand in awe.

This “Western civilization” is a fine thing, isn’t it?

16 comments

  1. That second pic is of a star fort, and those were post-medieval (17th century onwards), developed from the end-medieval bastion forts.

    The YouTube videos of the restored Notre Dame are well worth watching: it’s a wonderful building.

    1. I stand corrected about that Italian town’s place in history, although I have to note that none of those things existed in the 17th century either.

  2. String
    Stakes
    Plumb bob
    Story pole
    Intelligence
    Experience
    A few basic tools
    TIME
    Add it up and you can get any edifice built from local materials

  3. …… and they built them in Stone.

    and as Terrapod noted lot of workers and TIME…… Lots of TIME

  5. Things of beauty! What anonymous architects designed them? And do their drawings still exist? Now we build Obama Museums designed with CAD systems, and Frank Geary turns over his “designs” to structural engineers and computers to figure out how to hold them up. Gawd, what hath tech wrought?

      1. Beautiful! The shading in the drawing makes it not just an architectural drawing, but a work of art. Now I’ll have to look up photos of the cathedral itself. Thanks.

        2. That poster brought back a memory. In the late 70’s, I worked for two years in Bologna Italy, and with Florence only about an hour away, I drove over often to enjoy the city. An American colleague came to my workplace for a two week class, and after I told him he must see Florence, off we went the first weekend. When we got to the cathedral (Il Duomo as the locals call it), I found the big main door closed and locked. When I rattled the door, a guy opened it and snapped “Chiuso!” Closed. Thinking they might be following the practice of many Italian churches, opening in the morning for Mass, closing for lunch, and reopening in the afternoon, I asked in Italian (I was decent by that time) when it would be open again. He snapped again, as though I was stupid, “Dieci anni!” – 10 years, and slammed the door. I later found it was closed for a total restoration of all 38,000 sq ft of the dome frescoes. The dome being ~150 ft. across and starting at 270 ft. elevation up to nearly 400 ft., I could see why that might take a while. There’s human time measured in years, and then there’s cathedral time measured in decades if not centuries. Dome frescoes:
          https://www.flickr.com/photos/120861725@N07/27895932315/
          https://www.flickr.com/photos/120861725@N07/27895932315/

  6. From a SOTI quote, “My family was vacationing in Europe and touring a cathedral. I asked my Father in Law ( a builder) how long it would take to build something like this today.” “His response was, “”Forever we don’t know how anymore””

  7. That and the thousands of other similar ancient edifices in Europe are testimony to the much-condemned “white supremacy.” Rather than share and rejoice in those accomplishments, accusers whose raison d’etre is race hatred are masking an inferiority complex. AFAIK, there is no such thing in sub-Saharan Africa.

    I think that second picture is Palmanova, a star fort in northeastern Italy. Built around 1600 as a Venetian fort, its internal architecture is rather mundane, but the entry gates around the walls are spectacular. I was pleased to see them extant, as most other Italian medieval cities had their walls torn down ages ago.

      3. what kind of drugs do you have to be on or how deep of a labotomy do you need to receive in order to get to Wakanda?

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