scholarly journals Past and present: cartographic history of Famagusta

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 173-179
Author(s):  
Merve Senem Arkan

Abstract The island of Cyprus has been occupied by various powers, during which time the historical and cultural contexts of the main cities of the island have changed and left behind material traces. One of these cities is the main port city of the island Famagusta, where the various ruling powers affected its fabric and the different historic structures of the city combine with modern in the contemporary city. These multicultural structures and historical layers can be followed on the maps. The aim of this paper is to follow the changing urban fabric of Famagusta by examining the selected maps from the 16th century to modern times. How much the city undergoes spatial alteration and how much of the historical structure and developments can be followed on the cartographic records? The paper will question the perspective of the cartographers towards Famagusta and their priorities in depicting this multicultural city.

Author(s):  
Alexandra Wilson

La bohème is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world. But how did it come to be so adored? Drawing on an extremely broad range of sources, Alexandra Wilson traces the opera’s rise to global fame. Although the work has been subjected to many hostile critiques, it swiftly achieved popular success through stage performances, recordings, and filmed versions. Wilson demonstrates how La bohème acquired even greater cultural influence as its music and dramatic themes began to be incorporated into pop songs, film soundtracks, musicals, and more. In this cultural history of Puccini’s opera, Wilson offers a fresh reading of a familiar work. La bohème was strikingly modern for the 1890s, she argues, in its approach to musical and dramatic realism and in flouting many of the conventions of the Italian operatic tradition. Considering the work within the context of the aesthetic, social, and political debates of its time, Wilson explores Puccini’s treatment of themes including gender, poverty, and nostalgia. She pays particular attention to La bohème’s representation of Paris, arguing that the opera was not only influenced by romantic mythologies surrounding the city but also helped shape them. Wilson concludes with a consideration of the many and varied approaches directors have taken to the staging of Puccini’s opera, including some that have reinvented the opera for a new age. This book is essential reading for anyone who has seen La bohème and wants to know more about its music, drama, and cultural contexts.


2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-148
Author(s):  
Justin Thomas McDaniel

Edward Van Roy'sSiamese melting pot: Ethnic minorities in the making of Bangkokis a tour de force and one of the most important books on the history of Bangkok and late-modern Thai history ever to be published. It is clearly written and presented, it provides excellent maps, and brings to light little-known sources and surprising facts about the history of the most iconic neighbourhoods in the city. It exposes the histories of various Muslim, Mon, Lao, Vietnamese, Chinese, European, Indian, and other communities in late Ayutthaya and Bangkok, as well as highlights various ways of seeing Bangkok as a feudal city, a vibrant port-city, or a galactic polity. Van Roy also reveals the complexities of defining ethnicity and class in Bangkok's changing neighbourhoods. In this review article I will look closely at two issues Van Roy exposes that need some theoretical and critical interrogation: the ‘galactic polity/mandala’, and ‘ethnicity’. Then I will provide a short vignette about the Chettiar community in Bangkok and the idea of Hinduism in Bangkok history that both supports and supplements Van Roy's excellent research. I write this not to discount or criticise Van Roy's monumental achievement, but because I believe a book this important to the field deserves serious attention and engagement.


2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafał Kobis

Abstract The main aim of author was to present the specific features of the architecture and urbanisation of Algiers – the capital of Algeria. The history of the city was marked by two great periods: Muslim domination (especially from the 15th century) and French colonialism (in the years 1830 – 1962). Both of these have left behind numerous traces of architectural and urbanistic thought. The material effect of French domination is the architecture of modern Algiers, which took the form of a French ville, similar to Paris, Lyon or Marseille. On the other hand, the architecture of Algiers also includes the old Arab district – Casbah, that resembles the cities of the Middle East (Madīnah in Arabic), like Istanbul, Cairo or Damascus. Both architectural traditions give the city of Algiers a cosmopolitan and universal character. The threat to the peculiar coexistence of these traditions is the progressive migration from the countryside to the city, which results in the expansion of area of slums, called bidonvilles.


Author(s):  
Antonio Miguel Trallero Sanz

<p>The appearance of buildings is the result of a historical process that has left its imprint on them in at all its stages, particularly when this process has involved a constant change of uses, entailing continuous refurbishments and extensions. The building studied here is unusual in that it is the result of contributions by three major architects in the history of Spanish architecture: Lorenzo Vázquez, who introduced the Renaissance into Spain; Alonso de Covarrubias, one of its leading architects, and Ricardo Velázquez Bosco, perhaps the prime exponent of Spanish eclecticism. Their work, and that of others, mainly linked to the uses to which the building has been put, have created the structure as it stands today. This paper provides an overview of its history, how it has been enriched and how it has suffered irreparable losses, and examines how those changes led to the constant urban transformation of the surrounding area, in the urban fabric of the city.</p>


1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Horacio Schwartz ◽  

In contemporary society – according to Dennis Potter’s dictum – citizens have been transformed into consumers. The shift in social power behind this process is mirrored in the changing shape of the city. Tel Aviv, founded just eighty five years ago, is an extreme example of the interaction between urban conceptions and configurations and dominant social forces. By means of a schematic section through the history of the city, this paper attempts an assessment of the role of those forces and conceptions – or their absence – in determining the nature and scope of the present transformations of the urban fabric. Tel-Aviv is an assemblage of past and recent urban utopias, constrained by conditions, scaled-down and transformed, but still identifiable and influential. Partly “collision city” and partly “collage city” – in Colin Rowe’s terms – its growth, while chronologically continuous, resulted in a fragmented pattern; each district reflecting the urban ideals and historical conditions under which it came into being. Four determinant stages can be detected in the ascent of the city.


Spatium ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 37-44
Author(s):  
Melita Cavlovic ◽  
Mojca Smode-Cvitanovic ◽  
Andrej Uchytil

This paper traces the implications of Semper's Bekleidung theory on working processes in the field of architecture in Zagreb. The idiosyncrasies of the work of freshly graduated architects in a peripheral Austro-Hungarian city are analysed, both in the context of developing and spreading the city block system and the appearance of the new Art Nouveau style. Buildings in this new modern style, which appeared in 1897, were built sporadically throughout the city's urban fabric, which generally consisted of historicist residential buildings at the time. Parallel to historicism, the demand for Art Nouveau from clients grew, especially around the turn of the 20th century. At the time, typical migration processes resulted in the arrival of a well-educated populace that would commission Art Nouveau buildings in the coming years. The unique characteristics of Art Nouveau style, especially its ability to directly engage citizens and transmit messages of modern times, proved to be an important determinant in its increasing popularity in the city. Many professions and products were advertised on the fa?ades and ornamentation of buildings, the main bearers of Art Nouveau style.


2021 ◽  
pp. 377-388
Author(s):  
Dominic Perring

The evidence for London’s late fourth century decline is put under the microscope. The paucity and problematic interpretation of dating evidence is discussed, but it is concluded that important elements of London’s urban infrastructure were in serious disrepair from as early as the 380s. Some main roads could no longer have carried regular wheeled traffic. Sites of former public buildings on the margins of towns were converted into small cemeteries in the late fourth century, showing that the city was still populated but on a reduced scale and hinting at a closer relationship between communities of the living and communities of the dead. Rich assemblages recovered from within some wells within the town are thought likely to represent termination rituals, as properties were closed and households departed. Abandonment horizons can also be described from the finds left behind over the latest floors of some houses. These acts of closure and departure may also have begun in the 380s, perhaps under Magnus Maximus who had briefly revived London’s mint but also withdrew troops and administrators from Britain. Whilst the city may still have been occupied into the fifth century, this is far from certain, and there is no evidence of repair and refurbishment of urban properties beyond the last years of the fourth century. This evidence of redundancy and retreat seems consistent with the interrupted history of the diocesan administration. London had become marginal city of relatively little importance to Rome.


Author(s):  
Michael Spitzer

The introduction asks the important question of why music studies have been left behind by the affective turn informing the humanities and social sciences. It outlines the main themes explored by the book’s nine chapters, and contextualizes the book within the author’s long-running development of a concept of musical style. The broad aim is to tell a history both of musical emotion across a thousand years of European music; and to unfold the genealogies of individual emotions, including emotions embedded within specific historical and socio-cultural contexts. The introduction also disposes of some early objections to writing a history of musical emotion. And it frames the enterprise within the resurgence of interest in Charles Darwin and of the impact of biology over the humanities.


2004 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-79
Author(s):  
Nino Tschogoschwili

AbstractThe article sheds a new light on the history of German settlers in Tiflis of the 19th century. The main focus lies on emphasizing the important role these settlers played in cultural and economic life of the city. The records the emigrants left behind, depict in vivid tints the circumstances of their existence. Most of the Germans in Tiflis were craftsmen and merchants, others earned their life, for instance, as teacher, scientist, pastor, painter, musician or as enterpriser and man of business. Short biographies of some of the most outstanding characters round off the article.


2017 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 149-157
Author(s):  
Anis Mkacher

AbstractThe only building which has been preserved from the ancient urban fabric of Tripoli, Oea in antiquity, is the Triumphal Arch. By considering Arab sources, we may shed new light on its evolution, the place it had been in the past and the way it was considered during those times. If we compare two excerpts from Arab-Muslim historiography, written by local travellers, with Western testimonies, we see that the monument was reinterpreted in the light of the new culture which was established in the region and of the local history of the city.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document