Bauten – Bilder – Geschichten

What defines an art-historical approach to architectural history? What aims does it pursue, and what insights can it offer? The topics range from the ancient Via Appia to new museum buildings, from the Sainte-Chapelle to the Eiffel Tower, and from High Gothic to the history of heritage conservation.

Inherited categories of order and the explanatory models of Western scholarship are up for discussion, and the relevance and explanatory power of “a” history of art and architecture have to be renegotiated. Architectural history today once again has the potential to broaden the art-historical debate about the impact of the built environment through the value of building as a medium in its own right. The volume gathers fifteen contributions by the honoree's colleagues, each approaching that repositioning through specific buildings. It appeared on the occasion of Christian Freigang's 65th birthday, and the essays reflect a selection of the fields from the Middle Ages to the present on which his research is focused. The book thus opens a conversation about the richly interwoven relationship between buildings, images and stories.