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In 1530 Portugal began a radical rejection of the decorative wealth of the Manueline style, turning instead to a minimalist aesthetic with roots in military architecture, which for quite some time had become a status symbol in Portugal, one of Europe’s leading colonial powers.
So it was that by the time Philip II of Spain assumed [...]

As historicist styles spread, European architecture began showing the tendency to employ decorative and structural elements drawn from the art and architecture of the East. In the period between the English expansion in India during the first half of the 18th century and the French conquest of Algeria in 1830, what had initially been idle [...]

`Every age has left a sign of itself in an architectural style; why has ours not worked out its own style?’ With these words in 1826 Karl Friedrich Schinkel, returning from a trip to England, stated his aim to make himself the bearer of a new national style, of an architectural culture destined to express [...]

John Wolfe-Barry and Horace Jones, Tower Bridge, London, 1886-94
Movable bridges appeared at the end of the 19th century. Barry and Jones built Tower Bridge in London to resolve the problem of commercial traffic. The central structure is a movable roadway that can he raised or lowered to permit the passage of ships along the Thames.

Cathedral of the Smolny Convent, 1744-57
Rastrelli’s masterpiece is the cathedral of the Smolny convent. It has a central plan layout with a high dome flanked by four domed towers that represent the most successful synthesis of a traditional Russian church with the motifs typical of baroque architecture. In keeping with the desires of the Tsarina [...]

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, S Maria del Priorato, Rome, begun 1764
Piranesi expressed the complexity of his perception of ancient Rome in his only architectural work. The exuberant decoration of the wall around the church - with its apparently casual blend of motifs drawn from both imperial Rome and Christianity - contrasts with the distinct clarity of [...]

Sir Benjamin Baker, Firth of Forth Bridge, Edinburgh, 1882-89
The bridge is composed of three giant units supported by pylons over a total length of about 2,500 meters; it was perfectly suited to the many visionary works of the period and was immediately popular Very few people criticized the bridge’s appearance, but among them was William [...]

Leo von Klenze, Walhalla, near Regensburg, 1830-42
Symbol of the concept both archaeological and romantic of Greek civilization, the Walhalla presents the ideal of temple of Germanic heroes in rigorously Greek Doric forms a peripteral temple, based on the model of the Parthenon, which is reached by climbing a monumental outdoor stairway on a peak above [...]

Giuseppe Piermarini, Villa Reale, Monza, 1777-80
The constant presence of the Austrian archduke’s court in Milan inspired the Milanese aristocracy to update their residences. Piermarini was a leading player in this neo-classical season, creating numerous palaces in which the taste for simple forms, defined by sharp surfaces and sober decoration, was associated with a preference for [...]

Structural engineering applied to the making of bridges is one of the fields in which the application of the new construction technologies and materials introduced over the course of the 19th century produced significant changes.
The Coalbrookdale Bridge over the Severn River in England - built in 1779 to a design by Abraham Darby and John [...]