The Invention of the Historic Monument

"The Invention of the Historic Monument traces an important strand in the intellectual history of the West from the Renaissance to the present. During this period, consciousness of the remains of the past - particularly the monuments of classical antiquity and, in the nineteenth century impressive Romanesque and Gothic structures - grew exponentially. By the nineteenth century, architectural thinkers such as Ruskin, Viollet-le-Duc, Riegl, and Boito developed and implemented theories as to how these types of monuments could be maintained for posterity.

Analyzing the phenomenon of the historic monument from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries Francoise Choay exposes its ambivalent character, as a symbol of a capitalist economy, as a symptom of deep social malaise, and even as a touchstone for the rediscovery of humanistic values whose relevance for contemporary society can no longer be taken for granted."--Jacket.