Read Baroque & Rococo: A Complete History

The Baroque was the first truly global style of architecture, and the first to be designed, quite deliberately, as an experience: a church that overwhelms, a palace that stages its prince, a square that gathers a crowd into a single gesture. This complete history follows it from Counter-Reformation Rome through the Rome of Bernini and Borromini, out to Versailles, Vienna, St Petersburg, Mexico City and Ouro Preto, and watches it soften, at the end, into the Rococo — the same intelligence of space and ornament turned intimate. It teaches the reader, chapter by chapter, to recognise the Baroque's moving walls, painted heavens and scenographic cities, and to tell them from the lighter, asymmetrical world of the Rococo that followed.