The Classical Buildings of Bath

Architect Mike Jenner describes Bath's more notable classical buildings, explains the rules to which they were expected to conform, and tells how a few geniuses broke them to move European architecture and urban planning triumphantly forward. The book ranges from the Roman era through eighteenth-century showpieces such as John Wood's Circus and Royal Crescent to the controversial late twentieth-century Cavendish Lodge. The author shows how the problem of designing buildings which fit harmoniously into their context is not new, and gives examples of eighteenth-century classical buildings in Bath which caused serious visual damage to the earlier ones around them. He explains how this reflected the see-saw of fashion, with the work of every generation despised and rejected by the next, and then brought back into esteem by a later one. The Classical Buildings of Bath demonstrates the pleasure to be obtained from looking at classical buildings with proper understanding and the benefit of Stephen Morris' superlative photographs. See more