Marble Past, Monumental Present: Building with Antiquities in the Mediaeval Mediterranean

Abstract

A broad survey of the various structural and decorative uses of marble and antiquities throughout the Mediterranean during the Millennium following the Emperor Constantine. The heavy footprint of Roman civic and religious architecture helped provide attractive and luxurious building materials, re-used to construct diverse and often sophisticated monuments. The book argues that marble-rich sites and cities around this lake were linked at various times and in varying degrees by trade, pilgrimage, war and diplomacy, as well as by the imperatives of religion - Venice to Alexandria, Damascus to Córdoba. Aachen makes less sense without reference to Rome or Jerusalem; Damascus without Kairouan; Istanbul without Cairo. To accompany the illustrations in the text, the DVD at the back of the book contains over 5,000 images, together with discussions which extend various arguments in the printed book.