Austria, Bohemia, Hungary. Vienna: architecture and urban planning. Budapest: city of functional and symbolic structures. Prague, the city of gold. A guide of great cultural and architectural interest.
[Guide to 20th-century architecture in Vienna, Budapest and Prague] Austria, Bohemia, Hungary; the Austro-Hungarian Empire was founded in 1867 with the Ausleich, the “compromise” that generated a dual monarchy from the unified Hapsburg empire: two states, two parliaments, two crowns, but a shared government and, above all, a single sovereign: Franz Joseph. Ethnic, linguistic and cultural multiplicity: Austrians and Hungarians, a vast territory containing sizeable minorities of Germans, Italians, Slovaks, Czechs, Moravians, Poles, Ruthenians, Slavs, Rumanians and Croats. Up to the upheaval triggered by the assassination in 1914 in Sarajevo, the two world wars and the present, evolving political situation. Vienna: the difficult city, with its major projects of architecture and urban planning. Budapest: wealth, chaos and form; the rise as a cultural and economic center; the celebration of the millennium of the Hungarian nation, in the year 1896, provides the impulse to give the city functional and symbolic structures (bridges, metropolitan rail lines, reconstructions of important buildings). Zlatá Praha, Prague, the golden city, undecipherable because charged with ambiguous tastes, traditionalism and monumentalism, “a rich, gigantic architectural epic”. Besides the indispensable features of a guide (images/place/address/architect/date), each profile includes brief comments and an essential bibliography specific to each work; the book also includes an index of architects and a general bibliography.