Ruins
The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with Europe and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (October 2014) |
Ruins (from
There are famous ruins all over the world, with notable sites originating from
Cities
Ancient cities were often highly militarized and had fortified defensive settlements. In times of war, they were the central focus of armed conflict and would be sacked and ruined in defeat. Delhi, the capital of India, has been destroyed and ransacked seven to ten times and subsequently rebuilt. Every ruler decided to build the city in their own way either overlapping the ruins or next to the ruins. Ruins of seven cities of Delhi can still be traced in the modern-day city.[3]
Although less central to modern conflict, vast areas of 20th-century cities such as Warsaw, Dresden, Coventry, Stalingrad, Königsberg, and Berlin were left in ruins following World War II, and a number of major cities around the world – such as Beirut, Kabul, Sarajevo, Grozny, and Baghdad – have been partially or completely ruined in recent years as a result of more localized warfare.[4]
Entire cities have also been ruined, and some occasionally lost completely, to natural disasters. The ancient Roman city of Pompeii in modern-day Italy was completely destroyed during a volcanic eruption in the 1st century CE, and its uncovered ruins are now preserved as a World Heritage Site. The city of Lisbon in Portugal was also completely destroyed in 1755 by a massive earthquake and tsunami; and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake in the United States had left the city in almost complete ruin.
Deliberate destruction
Apart from acts of war, some important historic buildings have fallen victim to deliberate acts of destruction as a consequence of social, political and economic factors. The spoliation of public monuments in Rome was under way during the fourth century, when it was covered in protective legislation in the
In Europe, many religious buildings suffered as a result of the politics of the day. In the 16th century, the English monarch
In the 20th century, a number of European historic buildings fell into ruin as a result of taxation policies, which required all structures with roofs to pay substantial property tax. The owners of these buildings, like Fetteresso Castle (now restored) and Slains Castle in Scotland, deliberately destroyed their roofs in protest at, and defiance of, the new taxes. Other decrees of government have had a more direct result, such as the case of Beverston Castle, in which the English parliament ordered significant destruction of the castle to prevent it being used by opposition Royalists. Ireland has encouraged the ruin of grand Georgian houses, seen as symbols of Britain.[citation needed][a]
Relics of steel and wooden towers
As a rule, towers built of steel are dismantled, when not used any more, because their construction can be either rebuilt on a new site or if the state of construction does not allow a direct reuse, the metal can be recycled economically. However, sometimes tower basements remain, because their removal can sometimes be expensive. One example of such a basement is the basement of the former radio mast of Deutschlandsender Herzberg/Elster.
The basements of large wooden towers such as
The contemplation of "
Aesthetics
In the Middle Ages Roman ruins were inconvenient impediments to modern life, quarries for pre-shaped blocks for building projects, or marble to be burnt for agricultural lime, and subjects for satisfying commentaries on the triumph of Christianity and the general sense of the world's decay, in what was assumed to be its last age, before the
In the period of
Ruins remain a popular subject for painting and creative photography[12] and are often romanticized in film and literature, providing scenic backdrops or used as metaphors for other forms of decline or decay. For example, the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle in England inspired Turner to create several paintings; in 1989 the ruined Dunnottar Castle in Scotland was used for filming of Hamlet.
Footnotes
- ^ A selection chosen for their picturesque value, appear in Simon Marsden (photos), Duncan McLaren (text), In Ruins: The Once Great Houses of Ireland, 1980, expanded ed. 1997.
See also
- Modern ruins
- Dissolution of the monasteries
- Ephemerality
- Folly, for garden ruins
- Ghost town
- Ozymandias, an English poem about ruins
- Romanticism
- Shipwreck
References
- ^ "Nalanda University Ruins | Nalanda Travel Guide | Ancient Nalanda Site". Travel News India. 5 October 2016. Retrieved 18 February 2017.
- ^ Centre, UNESCO World Heritage. "World Heritage". whc.unesco.org. Retrieved 19 March 2018.
- ^ Max Weber, The city, 1958
- ^ http://urban.cccb.org/urbanLibrary/htmlDbDocs/A036-C.html Stephen Graham, Postmortem City: Towards an Urban Geopolitics
- ^ Codex Theodosianus, xv.1.14, 1.19, 1.43.
- ^ Novellae maioriani, iv.1.
- ^ See Dale Kinney, "Spolia from the Baths of Caracalla in Sta. Maria in Trastevere", The Art Bulletin 68.3 (September 1986):379-397) especially "The status of Roman architectural marbles in the Middle Ages", pp. 387–90.
- ^ But see Tim Edensor, Industrial ruins: spaces, aesthetics and materiality, 2005.
- ^ The European career of the pleasure and pathos absorbed from the European contemplation of ruins has been explored by Christopher Woodward, In Ruins (Chatto & Windus), 2001.
- ^ Widely illustrated in this context, including in David Watkin, The English Vision: the picturesque in architecture, landscape, and garden design, 1982:62
- ^ PERPINYA, Núria. Ruins, Nostalgia and Ugliness. Five Romantic perceptions of Middle Ages and a spoon of Game of Thrones and Avant-garde oddity. Berlin: Logos Verlag. 2014
- ISBN 978-1-906137-23-6