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Early in the 18th century Tsar Peter the Great founded the city of St Petersburg. Russia was beginning to open itself to Europe, and St Petersburg was the ‘window’ looking in that direction. The city took on a Western style, brought there and applied by Italian architects and an international collection of artists. Among the [...]

The rigid classicism of the Escorial, the spirituality of the Counter-Reformation, and the centralization of the state provided the themes for Spanish architecture throughout the 17th century. So it was that classical harmony gradually gave way to a more accentuated hierarchy of individual elements thanks to the sculptural elaboration of walls, the use of a [...]