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| The Whole Spread |
So I love Euro banknotes (and coins, but that's a whole other story) and wonder how many people know what they depict. I don't want my students just wandering round saying "wow, everything's so old" - I want them looking at buildings and realising that styles don't exist in a vacuum. They're intricately linked to what is going on in Europe at the time.
5 EURO CLASSICAL
Let's kick off with the 5 Euro. The banknotes always depict an archway or window on one side, and a bridge on the other. The structures are representative - they don't show a particular national building. That is reserved for each country's own coins if they wish. So what's the oldest still existing architectural style of building in Europe? We need to head down south for it - it's of course the architecture of Greece and Rome.
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| Classical Architecture |
Look at the design: it's a familiar "classical" archway. On the back we have something that looks a lot like a Roman viaduct. We're obviously talking about broadly 2000 years ago and many of these buildings are now ruins, and are can be found located in southern Europe. We have wonders like the Colosseum in Rome; the Arena of Nîmes; the peerless Acropolis in Athens. There are of course however classical buildings and ruins in Northern Europe too - although the Romans did not penetrate much north of the Danube or east of the Rhine.
10 EURO ROMANESQUE
Of course "Antiquity" ends. The marauding Germanic tribes descend on Rome and after several sackings put an end to the dying empire in 476. There follows a period known as the Dark Ages (*cue bad jokes about people bumping into each other with candles*) Nothing much is built, there's not a great deal of surviving culture as people wander to and fro across the continent, mingling and settling in new places.
Then, broadly around 800 or so we have a new style of architecture. Except it's not particularly original: it's a simpler, less grand form of building than the Romans did. It looks vaguely similar though, and for this reason we call it Romanesque architecture. We can see it on the 10 Euro note. The lack of complexity of the style is as a direct result of the political situation in Europe; we're coming out a period of intense turmoil and even whilst these buildings are being constructed there are still invasions from the North from the Vikings.
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| Romanesque Architecture |
The arch looks familiar, no? There's just one thing to note: there are semi-circular round arches, often one inside another. There isn't too much Romanesque architecture around: you can find the odd church dotted here and there. They tend to be quite small and basic, with massive heavy walls, small windows and they are fairly simple in style. They are therefore quite easy to spot where they've survived: Lisbon Cathedral is a great example of a very large one in fact. In Britain Romanesque architecture is normally called "Norman" whereas everywhere else it is "Romanesque".
20 EURO GOTHIC
NOW we're talking though. A clever Frenchman, Abbot Suger (also known as "Sugar", but only to his closest friends) became the chief patron and adopter of a brand new style of architecture in the 12th century. This is "Gothic" architecture, the great style of the so-called Middle Ages which broadly last until around 1500. It is represented on the 20 Euro note.
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| Gothic Architecture |
For Gothic Architecture, think tall and pointy. It's mainly seen in churches: we are building upwards to the Glory of God. A brilliant new invention, flying buttresses, allow the roof to be supported without the massive heavy walls of Romanesque structures. Instead we can put in wider aisles, and large windows often filled with beautiful stained glass. Gargoyles often complete the picture.
There are splendid Gothic churches and cathedrals across Europe. Think of Salisbury Cathedral in England, Cologne Cathedral in Germany, or the breath-taking Cathedral at Chartres with its intense blue windows. Perhaps the most spectacular of the lot is Notre Dame in Paris with its outrageous flying buttresses. Many of these churches take upwards of 150 years to complete: one end is one variety of Gothic, and by the time you get to the other end the particular style of Gothic has changed. St Vitus cathedral in Prague took an amazing 600 years to complete (they had a bit of an extended Staropramen/Becherovka break in the middle, it must be admitted)
50 EURO RENAISSANCE
When we hit 1500 we run into the two big R's. Actually the first R started quite a lot earlier than that in Italy: it's the Renaissance. It takes quite a long time, however, to reach the other parts of Europe. Renaissance of course means "rebirth" - the people of the time begin dismissing the "blind belief" of the Middle Ages and look instead to rational explanations and science to try to work out how the universe works.
These guys admire the thought, art and architecture of the Classical Age. They actually coin the term "Middle Ages" as a derogatory way of referring to the bit between the two periods of civilisation: Antiquity and Now (i.e. the 1500s). The archetypal Renaissance Man is Leonardo da Vinci: a painter, sculptor, mathematician, scientist, inventor and writer. Bet he was a right annoying sod to have as a dinner party guest.
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| Renaissance Architecture |
Look at the 50 Euro note. Does the style look familiar? Yes, this is becoming a bit dull. It reminds us, not surprisingly, of the architecture of Greece, and even more particularly, Rome. It's actually an absolutely conscious copying of the Classical style, with an emphasis on symmetry, geometry, proportion and a direct copying of the classical order of columns for example. THE Renaissance city in Europe is Florence, but this architecture can be found all across the continent. It takes until the mid 1600s to reach somewhere like Turku in Finland, by which time it has pretty much finished in Italy.
How do we recognise a Renaissance building? Well, the columns are a give away, as is the symmetry and lack of fanciful decoration that Gothic buildings tend to have. If it looks vaguely Roman in style but is in really good shape, chances are it's from the Renaissance. It's had less time to become a ruin.
100 EURO BAROQUE
How about the second R then? This is the Reformation, which kicks off with a vengeance (after some earlier mumblings) with Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses - complaints - about the Roman Catholic Church to a pretty insignificant church door in Wittenberg in northern Germany. An invention by another German, Guttenberg, makes this unimportant event a revolution: the moveable printing press means the ideas about reforming the Church spread across Europe like wildfire.
What's this got to do with architecture? Well not much, initially. Protestant Churches are stripped of their finery - the emphasis is on the word of God - Luther has translated the Bible for the first time into German and people can hear and understand themselves what the book has to say. The pulpit is the important place in a Protestant church - let's whitewash all over the colourful Gothic paintings and strip the altars of their gold. The important thing to do is listen, not be distracted.
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| Baroque Architecture |
Broadly much of Northern Europe has become Protestant: the movement has been very successful. The South remains mainly Catholic. Where the Protestants have swung to simplicity, the Catholics now go exactly the opposite way. Let's show people what Heaven on Earth can look like. Let's decorate our churches fancifully, with gold, with glitz! We demand angels, beautiful paintings, magnificent altars. This is the Counter-Reformation - and when the Catholic German Emperor becomes involves this becomes the Empire Strikes Back (is there no end to my bad jokes?)
This new style of architecture is Baroque. It's bold, it's bling and it's on the €100 bank note. It's not just about a style of building either; we're talking a feast for the senses. When you enter a Baroque church you will SEE the beauty; you will HEAR the new Baroque music; you will SMELL the incense. It's a feast for the senses. It is taking you out of your miserable hard mortal life and showing you what promises the Church can offer you - if you remain with the faith. There will be a huge dome towering above you in a Baroque church: the circular form is typical of the style.
Baroque architecture is intimately linked to the Catholic faith, so you will find much of it in Italy, Austria, Southern Germany, France, Spain - and it's not just Church architecture - palaces are decorated in the same heavy, ornate style. We don't see quite so much of it in Britain. St Paul's Cathedral is our best example: and it apparently was kept under scaffolding until the end, because the shock of seeing such a Catholic structure in London caused a scandal. Its highpoint is during the 1600s. Castle Howard in Yorkshire is a splendid non-religious example of the style. Late Baroque is called "Rococo" and it lasts through into the 1700s. It's getting even more silly and gaudy by this stage.
200 EURO ART NOUVEAU
The 19th century, or Victorian Age, is pretty pants for new architectural styles. I guess people are too busy building up either their overseas or continental empires (countries such as Spain and Portugal have already been busy exporting Baroque architecture to the New World with the help of the Jesuits). They are also rapidly industrialising and society is changing. In Europe we have no new proper styles of architecture throughout this period - instead we have "Historicism".
A drive around central Vienna is a perfect example of what is being built in the Historic Style. We have a neo-Gothic town hall - the idea is that the middle class citizens of the Low Countries had a great deal of autonomy in the Middle Ages. It's therefore a good thing to copy this style to show this isn't about the aristocracy or royalty ruling. It looks just like a building from 1300: but it's over 500 years later. It's "new-Gothic" (just like our own Houses of Parliament in London). We see the Assisi Kirche: a massive neo-Romanesque structure, built in 1898, in a style that's been dead for 700 years. The Austrian parliament building looks like a Greek temple: Athena stands with her back to it: it is pure neo-Classical: a direct copy of a style 2000 years old. We also have neo-Renaissance and neo-Baroque mansions, hotels and public buildings dotted around the Ring.
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| Art Nouveau Architecture |
For crying out loud, no wonder people get bored with this crap. We've seen it all before, right? It's not actually an architectural style - it's just copying old stuff - so we're definitely not going to give it its own bank note. We need something new, different. In Vienna a group of artists (Klimt foremost amongst them) "secede" - they object so strongly to the historicism around them that they form their own breakaway movement. A style of architecture develops that is playful and inspired by nature. Plants and flowers are often used to decorate these new building facades, as are curved lines.
It's more than just a style of architecture: it's a philosophy, an art - a reaction against the stodge. It has its heyday from 1890 to 1910. There are beautiful, curious, wonderful Art Nouveau (literally "new art") buildings all over Europe. In Britain some wonderful examples are found in Glasgow. There are also some great art nouveau touches inside Liberty's in London.
500 EURO MODERN ARCHITECTURE
We pass on through Art Deco in the 1920s and 1930s (a more mathematical, geometric style of design and architecture that is not shown on the notes) and on to the architecture of today. We are talking glass and steel. Whether this is a uniform style or not is a good question, but the 500 Euro note is a serious bit of kit. It's a massive note, designed in particular for Germans, who eschew credit cards and cheques. They like to pay in cash, even for something like a car. If you buy a £20,000 car in England you'd need 400 x £50 notes. The same €23,000 car in Germany could be bought with just 46 of these big pink whoppers. On the French Autoroutes they have signs warning no €200 or €500 are accepted at toll booths: not in French or English, but only in German!
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| Modern Architecture |
There's not too much to be said about the style of the architecture other than there are, in my opinion, some absolutely superb beautiful examples of it (I *love* the Gherkin in London) and I'd quite happily knock down the Shard before they stick the last piece of North Korean lookalike glass on it (yes, Google Image Search Pyongyang and it's THERE). They say you should give all architecture a generation before you judge it - so I'm penciling in 2030 before I hire a crane and a wrecking-ball.
Quite a Journey
But there we are. It's been quite a journey to go from the Colosseum to the Shard, but I hope you've hung in there. As I started out saying, architecture does not ever exist in a void - it's reflective of what's going on in politics, religion, art, society at the time. I'm no expert, but I love looking at buildings, trying to understand more about them, and I love the fact that a prop such as Euro notes can be so handy in reminding us of the story.
I hope you've enjoyed reading as much as I've enjoyed writing this! Pictures of some of the buildings I've referred to can be found below.
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| Roman Arena, Nimes (€5 Classical) |
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| Lisbon Cathedral (€10 Romanesque) |
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| Notre Dame Cathedral Paris (€20 Gothic) |
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| Hospital of Innocents, Florence (€50 Renaissance) |
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| Castle Howard, Yorkshire (€100 Baroque) |
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| Parliament Building, Vienna (Neo-Classical) |
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| Apartment Blocks, Vienna (€200 Art Nouveau) |
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| Swiss Re, London: the Gherkin (€500 Modern) |
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