The Invention of the Historic Monument

This book traces an important strand in the intellectual history of the West from the Renaissance to the present. During this period, consciousness of the remains of the past - particularly the monuments of classical antiquity and, in the nineteenth century, impressive Romanesque and Gothic structures - grew exponentially. Architects such as Ruskin, Viollet-le-Duc, Riegl, and Boito developed and implemented theories as to how these types of monuments could be maintained for posterity. Analyzing the phenomenon of the historic monument from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries, Françoise Choay exposes its ambivalent character, as a symbol of a capitalist economy, as a symptom of deep social malaise, and even as a touchstone for the rediscovery of humanistic values whose relevance for contemporary society can no longer be taken for granted. Originally published in the French, this book was awarded the Grand Prix National du Patrimoine by the French government in 1995.

• First general survey of the history of preservation usually assumed as beginning in the twentieth century
• Is among the very few critical approaches to the question
• Offers a multinational history