User:Guyarv/sandbox/Architecture of Strasbourg

See also: Strasbourg

The city of Strasbourg represents a synthesis of the periods of Roman antiquity, the Holy Roman Empire, the German Renaissance, Imperial France, French neoclassicism, and 19th-20th century Imperial Germany. These aesthetic forces shaped the modern city of Strasbourg, most easily recognizably in the form of its architecture.

Strasbourg Cathedral
Main article: Strasbourg Cathedral

The Strasbourg Cathedral is one of Europe's greatest feats of Gothic architecture. In 1015, the cathedral was constructed in the Romanesque style when the city was still a part of the Holy Roman Empire. However, of this original Romanesque structure, only the perimeter and crypt remain. The Gothic addition (composing of the facade and tower) was finished in the 15th century. The cathedral's iconic color comes from the Red Vosges sandstone which has been continuously mined from the city's hinterlands. The cathedral is equipped with hundreds of sculptures, stained-glass windows, an animated organ, and a Renaissance-style astronomical clock from 1842. Up until the 19th century, the cathedral's 142 meter (466 foot) spire was the tallest structure in the world.

During the French Revolution, an especially-radical group called Les Enragés planned on removing the Cathedral's spire, but the townspeople crowned it with a giant metal Phrygian cap to associate it with the ideals of the revolution.

During both the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and World War Two, the cathedral was damaged but since carefully restored.

Place de la République
Main article: Place de la République

The Place de la République ("Square of the Republic") is a large public square in northeast Strasbourg's "German Quarter". It was built following the defeat of France by Prussia in 1870 and was designed to celebrate bringing Alsace-Lorraine (German: Elsaß-Lothringen) back into German control. This park (then dubbed Kaiserplatz) was designed with grandeur in mind: containing wide roads, flanked by monumental cultural buildings, and luxurious administrative centers and housing.

The park is surrounded by the Rhine Palace, University of Strasbourg's library, the tax building Hôtel des impôts, and the National Theater.

The centerpiece of the park is a war memorial designed by Léon-Ernest Drivier in 1936. It depicts a woman holding the bodies of her two fallen sons and is meant to represents the city's dual French-German history.

Petite France
Main article: Petite France

The Petite French quarter dominates the city's ancient riverbeds and canals of the Rhine. This district begun to expand in the early 1100s, moving the city's boundaries to the river Ill's delta. Composed of timber-frame houses from the 16th and 17th centuries along long, winding streets, this district housed the city's craftsmen: fisherman, tanners, millers, and smiths all labored here.

In 1686, a dam was added to the already-existing series of defensive towers at the edges of Petite France's four canals. Additional levels were added to this defensive dam in 1865 and 1966, now for use as a panoramic platform.

European Parliament
Main article: European Parliament in Strasbourg

The European Parliament of Strasbourg is the city's greatest modern feature. Completed in 1999 by Architecture Studio Europe, it is comprised of 17 floors, 1,133 offices, 18 commission halls, a 750-seat chamber, three internal "streets", and a winter garden.

The architecture of the structure is meant to embody the foundations of Western civilization: classicism and baroque, transition from geometric to ellipse structure, an unsettled snapshot of geometry, and a transition away from centralized power. The construction consciously uses structural transparency as a metaphor for the European Union's commitment to democracy.