Description
Book SynopsisA comparative study of cities that fell into ruin through human involvement. We have been taught to think of ruins as historical artifacts, relegated to the past by a catastrophic event. Instead, Martin Devecka argues that we should see them as processes taking place over a long present. In Broken Cities, Devecka offers a wide-ranging comparative study of ruination, the process by which monuments, architectural sites, and urban centers decay into ruin over time. Weaving together four case studiesof classical Athens, late antique Rome, medieval Baghdad, and sixteenth-century Mexico CityDevecka shows that ruination is a complex social process largely contingent on changing imperial control rather than the result of immediate or natural events. Drawing on literature, legal texts, epigraphic evidence, and the narratives embodied in monuments and painting, Broken Cities is an expansive and nuanced study that holds great significance for the field of historiography.
Trade ReviewThe prose is very elegant and lucid, well suited for upper-level undergraduate classes pertinent to matters of pre modern urbanism and thus worth assigning.
—Nathanel Andrade, Binghamton University (SUNY),
The Classical OutlookTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1. Athens: Democracy, Oligarchy, and Ruins in Classical Greece
Chapter 2. Rome: Ruins and Empire in the Late Antique World
Chapter 3. Baghdad: Postclassical Ruins and the Islamic Cityscape
Chapter 4. Tenochtitlan: Preservationism and Its Failures in Early Modern Mexico
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
