Entries about ruins

I enjoy picking out and photographing the small (and sometimes not so small) details of buildings. Indeed, I can find myself omitting to photograph the building as a whole as it’s often the details that capture my imagination. Wherever I travel I find building details that intrigue me.

Let’s explore!

Riga

Art Nouveau, or Jugendstil as it is also known, was an art and architecture movement of the late 19th to early 20th centuries, at its height 1890–1910. This was an art form that crossed genres, from architecture to interior design to jewellery to textiles, and more. It proposed that art should be a way of life, and that everyday items could be beautiful too. It was inspired by nature – flowers, animals, natural forms. I love the way that its shapes flow organically, and the combination of fluidity of design with the rigidity of stone makes buildings in this style particularly appealing to me.

And Riga is the place to see them! It is famous for its large number of well-preserved (or more often, well-restored) Art Nouveau buildings. These are dotted across the city, but there is a particular concentration of them in one area on and around Elizabetes and Alberta streets.

This is one of the most dramatic and dazzling buildings in the district, 4a Strēlnieku iela. It dates from 1905 and is one of many by perhaps the best-known architect of Riga’s Art Nouveau period, Mikhail Eisenstein (father of the famous film director Sergei Eisenstein). Eisenstein’s main concept was that even the smallest thing could be beautiful. I loved the Wedgewood-blue and white colour scheme of this building, and the over-the-top ornamentation with snakes and even robot-like creatures.

These are two of my favourite images from Riga. On the left, a detail of one of the most famous Art Nouveau buildings in the city, 10b Elizabetes Street, (again by Mikhail Eisenstein). It dates from 1903 and is extremely colourful, adorned with a rich mix of masks, peacocks, sculptural elements and geometrical figures.

And on the right, a detail of no 33 in the same street, yet again the work of Mikhail Eisenstein. In this, Eisenstein made use of elements of almost every historical architectural style that he could think of, from Roman design through the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and on to Classicism. There are decorative masks, stylised plants and geometric forms galore, and all set off, when I was there, by some beautiful purple flowers planted on the balconies.

This is 13 Alberta iela, another of Eisenstein’s designs and one influenced by his distress at the news of the defeat of Russian fleet in the Russian-Japanese war in 1904. The façade is dominated by two large masks of screaming women (this is one of them) and above these are structures in the shape of upended cones which support the bay windows on the attic floor.

I'll finish this brief look at some of the Art Nouveau glories of Riga with a selection of a few more details:

Vienna

For architecture from the same era Vienna is also a delight (and for other reasons too, including food and drink!) The city is rich in architectural details from many eras in fact; the city offers Gothic, Baroque, Art Nouveau and modern in abundance, although it is probably the Baroque for which it is best known.

Not being an expert, I am not always able to be sure of the period from which a building dates, especially when so many of them have been reconstructed or redeveloped over the years, but in Vienna it is the flourishes of Baroque and the more recent flamboyance of much of Art Nouveau that continually catches my eye.

The building above and right is on Tuchlauben, an elegant street that leads north west from Stephansplatz. These are caryatids, defined by Wikipedia as ‘a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head’. I love to see them and to photograph them as they are usually so elegant and beautiful. I especially like the way that here the caryatid is in a contrasting stone to the rest of the building.

The male equivalent of a caryatid is a telamon. This one (left) is on the Verwaltungsgerichtshofs, on the Judenplatz, which gets its name because it was at the centre of Jewish life in Vienna in medieval times. The Jews lived in a ghetto of just 70 houses, their backs turned to surrounding streets to form a wall, and in the centre was this large square.

Today the square has a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, the work of the English artist Rachel Whiteread. But back to the Verwaltungsgerichtshofs. This houses the Austrian Administrative Court of Justice and was formerly the Bohemian Court Chancellery. It is very ornate with female figures above the entrances representing the cardinal virtues of moderation, wisdom, justice and bravery, and a telamon either side of each. High above an angel blows a trumpet, flanked by more figures.

Here is something a bit different. These little animals in the past served as addresses for a population who might not all be literate. I found this one somewhere in the streets between Stubentor U-Bahn station and the Scwedenplatz – you will have to keep your eyes open for this or similar creatures when you visit Vienna.

Let’s finish our time in this beautiful city with a few photos of one of my favourite buildings to photograph there, the Hofburg Palace, or more specifically its Michaelertrakt – the 19th century St Michael Wing, named after the church it faces. The graceful curve of this building is broken by a grand archway, either side of which a series of sculptural groups tell the story of the labours of Hercules (the work of Italian sculptor Lorenzo Mattielli). The structure is surmounted by a striking central green dome 50 metres high, two smaller ones ornament the ends, there are eagles, trumpeting angels, statuesque figures and coats of arms – and the whole is fabulously Viennese!

Italy

The warm colours of Italian houses feature in many photos, including my own, but the details of letter-boxes, signs, carvings of saints etc., are to my eye equally picture-worthy. Here’s a selection:

As a Roman Catholic country, Italy has many small shrines to the Virgin Mary on the walls of houses:

Elsewhere in Europe

Here is just a random selection of little details captured in a variety of places:

This is becoming a theme!

And while we’re in Portugal, we have to include some street signs, made from beautiful azulejos, the traditional glazed ceramic tiles:

Uzbekistan

Let's leave Europe and explore further afield (further for me, that is). If I had to pick out my favourite countries for this sort of detail-spotting, Uzbekistan would be high on the list (along with India, but that is covered extensively in my other blogs).

The well-restored (some would say possibly too well-restored) ancient buildings of Samarkand are covered in the intricate tile mosaics typical of this style of Islamic architecture, with blue the dominant colour. As one of our travelling companions, Els, exclaimed at the Shah-i-Zinda, it was indeed at times ‘too much for my eyes!’

The Shah-i-Zinda is the holiest site in Samarkand. According to legend, the prophet Elijah led Kussam-ibn-Abbas, first cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, to the Afrosiab hill north east of Samarkand's current location. The legend tells how Kussam came to bring Islam to this Zoroastrian area, and was attacked and beheaded for his trouble. It was believed that despite this he continued to live, and indeed is alive still in an underground palace on this site, which now bears his name; ‘Shah-i-Zinda’ means ‘the Living King’.

The Gur Emir is the mausoleum of Tamerlaine. Wherever you go in Uzbekistan you’ll find it impossible to avoid hearing that name. It seems every nation needs its heroes, and when the Soviets left the country and their heroic statues of Lenin and Marx were pulled down, it was Tamerlaine who took their places on plinths around the country and who came to symbolise for Uzbeks their new-found independence and freedom. Observers from outside might question his credentials as a hero – this is after all a man who, in attempting to conquer the world, left an estimated 17 million people dead in his wake. But in Samarkand in particular he left the legacy of great peace, prosperity and splendour. Naturally then his mausoleum is of a scale to impress.

An unnamed poet is said to have exclaimed on seeing it, ‘Should the sky disappear, the dome will replace it’, and you can sort of see what he meant.

Bibi Khanum was Tamerlaine’s great work, his attempt to build a mosque larger and more splendid than the Muslim world had ever seen. But his ambitions here overstretched the capabilities of his craftsmen, and the mosque was doomed almost from the start, though not from want of effort. He employed the very best slaves and workers, imported 95 elephants from India to haul the wagons and, when he judged the portal too low, had it pulled down and ordered it to be rebuilt. He himself superintended the work, coming to the site each day in his litter, and arranging for meat to be thrown down to the men digging the foundations rather than have them stop working for a moment. The result was a mosque of never-before seen proportions. But this splendour wasn’t to last. Almost from the first day it was in use, the mosque began to crumble, putting worshippers in peril. No one seems to know for certain why this was – maybe the building was simply too ambitious for the technologies of the day. Whatever the reason, this is one ancient structure that has so far defied the attempts of modern builders to restore it properly – and I found it all the more compelling for that very reason!

I will no doubt write more about Uzbekistan in some future blog here, but for now here are just a few more photos from our time there:

Antigua Guatemala

I could clearly go on a long while with this blog entry, but will finish with just one more place where I found lots of photogenic details, among the earthquake-devastated churches of Antigua Guatemala. This was the country’s third capital. It was founded in 1543 when an eruption of the Vulcan Agua (Water Volcano) destroyed the second capital in the valley of Almononga. In 1566 the city received the name of ‘Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala’ (Very Noble and Very Loyal City of Santiago of the Caballeros of Guatemala), or Santiago de Guatemala for short. Despite the ravages of several earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the city was the capital and economic centre of the whole Kingdom of Guatemala (today’s southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.). But in 1773 came the most destructive of all the earthquakes, the Santa Marta, and much of the city’s political and religious infrastructure was destroyed. A proposal was drawn up to move the capital for a third time, and despite some opposition, in 1775, a royal letter was written to order the foundation of a new capital. Left largely in ruins this city might perhaps have crumbled away completely, but enough fabric and people remained to keep it alive. Today’s Santiago de Guatemala, Antigua, is a National Monument and it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979. At its heart is an almost perfect grid of streets and avenues, each of them a gem, lined with picturesque houses (many single-storey because of the constant threat from the forces of nature) and dotted with the skeletons of those ruined colonial churches.

The convent of Santa Clara was founded in 1699 for a small group of six nuns who moved here from Mexico. With support from the city’s wealthier citizens they constructed a church and convent buildings between 1703 and 1705, but these were destroyed in the earthquake of 1717. The remains standing today are those of a new church and convent started in 1723 and finished in 1734 – and destroyed in 1773.

Antigua’s cathedral might well stand as a metaphor for the city itself: built, destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed again, and finally rebuilt for a third time but on much less grand a scale. Now the ruins of its former grandeur lie in the shadows of today’s more modest structure.

I hope this blog has given you a sense of why I love to look for the details of buildings and, as I said at the start, often focus (literally!) on these at the expense of the whole.

What is it that makes a ruined building so photogenic? Why would a building that is no longer fit for the purpose for which it was constructed somehow look better, in an artistic sense, than it did when complete and fit for purpose? And yet, such is often the case.

The ruins in my photos here range in age from very ancient (the temples of Tikal and Lamanai) to pretty recent (Hiroshima). In some cases the destruction is due to the passing of time, in others it was down to a natural catastrophe or even a deliberate act of man. But all are picturesque in some way, at least to my eye.

Tikal

Tikal is considered one of the greatest sites of the ancient Mayan World. It contains the tallest pre-Columbian structure now standing in the Americas, Temple IV, and many others besides, all scattered across a wide area, and many still hidden by jungle growth and the accumulation of centuries of earth. Those that have been excavated, and (in some cases) restored, tower above the tree tops, giving rise to the nickname that was quoted to us several times by locals: the “New York of Guatemala”. Well, New York it isn’t, but it is all the more amazing for that. To reflect that these massive structures were built so long ago (between the late 7th and early 9th centuries), and without the use of technology, is truly awesome.

Lamanai

The Lamanai Maya ruins may be less extensive than those at sites elsewhere in Central America, but they are well worth a visit, whether or not you’ve been to some of the other sites. Lamanai means "submerged crocodile" in the Maya language. The site is notable for several reasons. It was occupied long after many other Maya sites had fallen into disuse and neglect (until at least 1650 AD) and unlike other sites, many of its temples were built in layers, each on top of a previous structure, rather than temples being torn down and built anew.

Hundreds of ruins are said to be still hidden in the undergrowth, and here and there you will get glimpses perhaps of a man-made hollow that was once a water reservoir, or a “hill” that almost certainly conceals the remains of a temple. But although on a much smaller scale than Tikal, there are still four notable temples which have been restored, three of which can be climbed.

Stela Temple (the stela is a replica, with the original in the museum)

And while we are in this part of the world ...

Antigua Guatemala

Antigua, or Antigua Guatemala to give it its full name, was the country’s third capital. It was founded in 1543 when an eruption of the Vulcan Agua destroyed the second capital in the valley of Almononga. In 1566 the city received the name of “Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala” (Very Noble and Very Loyal City of Santiago of the Caballeros of Guatemala), or Santiago de Guatemala for short. Despite the ravages of several earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the city was the capital and economic centre of the whole Kingdom of Guatemala (today’s southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.). But in 1773 came the most destructive of all the earthquakes, the Santa Marta, and much of the city’s political and religious infrastructure was destroyed. And so the capital was moved yet again.

Details of cathedral ruins

Left largely in ruins the city might perhaps have crumbled away completely, but enough fabric and people remained to keep it alive. Today’s Santiago de Guatemala, Antigua, is a National Monument and it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979. At its heart is an almost perfect grid of streets and avenues, each of them a gem, lined with picturesque houses (many single storey because of the constant threat from the forces of nature) and dotted with the skeletons of those ruined colonial churches.

Iglesia el Carmen

Of course my own continent of Europe has more than enough ruins to keep my camera busy!

Pompeii and Herculaneum

These are possibly the most famous of European ruins, especially Pompeii. The temples and other buildings near its entrance command great views of Vesuvius beyond, making it easy to imagine your way back into history and the dreadful day in AD 79 when the city was engulfed by pumice and ash. There are grand villas and humble shops, extensive bath-house complexes, theatres and small restaurants – everything that the population would have needed for a comfortable existence in this busy town.

The small theatre

When Vesuvius erupted in AD 79 Herculaneum was buried in volcanic mud rather than in the lava which engulfed it perhaps more famous neighbour, Pompeii. It lay hidden and nearly intact for more than 1600 years until it was accidentally discovered by some workers digging a well in 1709. This has resulted in a different type of preservation of its ruins, with the mud doing relatively little damage to the buildings, instead slowly filling them from the bottom up.

Herculaneum was a smaller town with a wealthier population than Pompeii at the time of its destruction. You can easily imagine that the seaside villas would have been very desirable residences, and the lifestyle of those who occupied them would have been wonderful – sipping wine on the terraces overlooking the bay, with slaves catering to your every need, beautiful mosaics and friezes adorning the walls, a pleasant climate away from the hassles of the city. I loved wandering around envisaging all this – but then also contemplating the terror that must have descended on this peaceful spot when the inhabitants suddenly realised the enormity of what was happening to the mountain that looms over it.

Athens

Our only visit (to date) to Athens was a fleeting one, with the main aim being to take in a football match between our team, Newcastle United, and local team Panionios (not to be confused with the more famous Panathinaikos). But as always on our football trips we made sure to fit in some sightseeing and take in the ruins of the Acropolis and a few other places in the city.

Heidelberg

Mark Twain said of Heidelberg:
“A ruin must be rightly situated, to be effective. This one could not have been better placed. It stands upon a commanding elevation, it is buried in green woods, there is no level ground about it, but, on the contrary, there are wooded terraces upon terraces, and one looks down through shining leaves into profound chasms and abysses where twilight reigns and the sun cannot intrude.”

Heidelberg claims on a leaflet we picked up there to be “the world’s most famous castle”, and while that is definitely debatable, it is certainly very imposing and packed with history. It was built over a period of more than three hundred years during the 14th to 16th centuries, and therefore combines mainly Gothic and Renaissance styles of architecture. In 1693 it was blown up by the troops of Louis XIV, and the town burned to the ground. A few years later the residents, who had fled, returned to rebuild their town, using many stones from the castle as they did so, and it remained in ruins until 1742 when Elector Karl Theodor began to rebuild it. In 1764 however a bolt of lightning destroyed several buildings. The work was discontinued and the castle remains partly in ruins to this day.

Some English ruins

Many of our explorations closer to home are in the north east, on our regular trips to see family in Newcastle, so I can’t omit some of the wonderful ruins in that region.

Holy Island, or Lindisfarne, is, in my view, one of the most magical places in England. A small “semi-island” (that is, an island only at high tide), it has been a centre of spirituality since St Aidan founded a monastery here in the seventh century AD. Situated in the heart of the small village, the ruins of Lindisfarne Priory define what Holy Island is all about. This rich monastery on an isolated island was a prime target for Viking raiders who pillaged this coast. In 875, as a result of their repeated attacks, the monks left. But in 1150 Benedictine monks from Durham returned and built a new priory here. This was to survive until Henry VIII closed it in 1537, destroying the buildings and using some of the stones to build the island’s castle.

Today only a skeleton of the formerly imposing church remains, its so-called “rainbow arch” an evocative remnant of a vault-rib of the now-vanished tower. Around it are the foundations of the monastic buildings – kitchen, refectory, chapter house, cloister etc. With a little imagination you can start to visualise what life would have been like for this remote religious community – devoting their lives to the worship of God in this magical, spiritual place.

Where the River Tyne flows into the North Sea lies Tynemouth, with its ruined fortified priory on a headland just north of the river mouth.

This promontory has been a strategically important spot since the time of the Saxons, who named it Pen Bal (or Benebal) Crag and founded a priory here in the 7th century. In 651 King Oswin of Deira was murdered and his body brought to Tynemouth for burial, the first of three kings to be buried here. He was later canonised and his burial place became a shrine. But in 875 the Danes destroyed the priory, after repeated raids. By the 11th century it had long been abandoned and the burial place of St. Oswin forgotten. But when a young hermit, Edmund, reported seeing St. Oswin in a vision in which the saint showed him his tomb, that tomb was rediscovered and the monastery restored. The building of the Norman church began in 1090, and the whole monastery was substantially completed by the end of the 13th century. The priory was dissolved under Henry VIII in 1538 and the king took ownership of the neighbouring castle and strengthened the fortifications of this strategic site. The church also was left standing, possibly because of its importance as a landmark for shipping along this often treacherous coast.

This coast is also famous for its castles. A few, like Bamburgh, are still relatively intact (and therefore not included here) but others form rather dramatic ruins, none more so perhaps than Dunstanburgh which stands on a small headland north of the fishing village of Craster and is accessible from there only on foot.

Another favourite of mine is Warkworth which dominates the small village of the same name:

And of course we can’t talk about the ruins to be found in the north of England without mentioning the most extensive of them all – Hadrian’s Wall and the associated forts and mile castles. In the early years of the second century AD the northern limit of the Roman Empire lay in what is now the north of England. The Emperor Hadrian commanded a Wall to be built in order to keep "intact the empire", but probably also to assert the supremacy of Roman power. This wall had a series of forts at approximately five mile intervals, where soldiers guarding the frontier were stationed. Of those that still have some remains, Housesteads, or Vercovicium to give it its Roman name, is probably the best known and most visited:

Hadrian's Wall from Housesteads

Hiroshima

I will finish with a building whose ruins stand as testament to the horrors that man can inflict on man, the Genbaku Dōmu or Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima.

When, at 8.15 am on August 6th 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated over Hiroshima, the city became in an instant one of the most famous in the world; but what city would ever have wanted that sort of fame?

The atomic bomb’s target was the Aioi Bridge but it missed this slightly and exploded almost directly above this building, which was at the time an exhibition hall known as the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. Because the blast was felt from immediately above, hitting the structure vertically, a surprising amount remained intact even though, of course, everyone inside was killed instantly.

For some years after the war the skeleton of the building remained as it was. There were some who felt it should be pulled down and the site redeveloped, while others argued for its restoration and yet others for its preservation as a ruin, to stand as a memorial to what had happened and to those who had lost their lives. The latter group won the day, and in 1966 the city council declared that it intended to preserve the building, undertaking only the minimal work necessary to ensuring its stability. In December 1996, the Atomic Bomb Dome was registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Its listing was based on its survival from a destructive force, the first use of nuclear weapons on human population, and importantly its representation as a symbol of peace.