A complete circuit of walls is rare, because walls are expensive to maintain and inconvenient to keep once nobody is attacking. These fifteen survived, and most can be walked.
1.…
A grand hotel lobby is a piece of architecture the public was always meant to walk into. These twelve have histories worth knowing and interiors worth seeing, and in most…
The great railway stations were built to impress, at a moment when rail travel was new and cities were competing to announce their arrival. Most airports have never attempted anything…
The Taj Mahal was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, and it has become the world's most recognizable monument to grief.…
Bridges are the most public form of engineering there is: you can see the whole argument at once, and you find out immediately whether it worked. These fourteen are worth…
Every famous landmark looks inevitable once it's standing. The reality is that most of them emerged from competitions, arguments, budget crises, and rejected alternatives, and a surprising number were nearly…