These are not clocks with decoration added. They are astronomical instruments that happen to display the hour, built when the position of the sun and moon mattered to planting, sailing…
An aqueduct is mostly invisible. The famous arched bridges are the short sections where a valley had to be crossed; the great majority of any system ran underground or along…
What these have in common is a building doing something it was not built for, and a business that decided the space was worth the inconvenience. Here are fifteen worth…
Source: Wikipedia
Most people assume Pompeii has been fully uncovered. The photographs suggest a complete Roman town sitting in the open, streets and houses and shopfronts, waiting for visitors.
Roughly two-thirds…
Mortar is the least glamorous part of any building and frequently the part that determines whether it survives. Stone and brick last for millennia on their own; what usually fails…
A pier is an odd piece of architecture: a road to nowhere, built at considerable expense, whose purpose is the walking rather than the arriving. Here are fifteen worth doing.…