John Wilson's painting of Piece Hall (Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council)
At some unknown moment in around 9,500 BC, hunter-gatherers in what is now south-east Turkey, and was then lush grasslands rich with pistachio and almond forests, and abundant with sheep and goats, did something for the first time in human history. Seven thousand years before ancient Britons raised Stonehenge, they built a city.
It was small by modern standards, and the site now known as Göbekli Tepe is about two dozen acres. It is a complex of 20 circular compounds and limestone T-shaped pillars richly decorated with pictograms of animals, insects and humanoid figures (some headless) who may be humans — or gods. Alongside the large enclosures huddle smaller domestic structures. For reasons that we will never fully comprehend, our Stone Age ancestors had created the world’s oldest urban settlement. Archaeologists are certain of one thing, however — the site was sacred for the worship of gods and the fulfilment of holy duties.
About 4,000 years later and 400 miles to the south east, the first urban civilisation arrived in the swamps of ancient Mesopotamia. Uruk was probably their first true city. Much about Uruk is also lost to time. But its archaeology, and the ancient Sumerian poem, The Epic of Gilgamesh, both tell a tale in which settlements such as Uruk began life as holy sites created on island mounds in the marshes. Sumerian cites continued to be defined by their temples. People met there to trade, but they came there to pray.
Most urban creation myths have similar patterns. Divine or heroic intervention is localised, enshrined and worshipped. In the process a specific place or an entire city is imbued with sanctity and, via pilgrimage, ritual or festival, the very patterns of travel and trade that boost prosperity are nurtured and encouraged. Ancient Rome had multiple myths. The temple of Saturn was located at the base of the Capitoline Hill (where Saturn was supposed to have founded the pre-Roman city) and also on the edge of the forum. The festival of Lupercalia to secure Rome’s health and fertility was held each February in the holy cave of the Lupercal beneath the Palatine Hill, in which the she-wolf had suckled Romulus and Remus.
Across time and continents, holy cities celebrate the location of a physical interaction between man and god. Jerusalem, which suffers from a surfeit of competing sanctities, is too obvious to discuss. Varanasi in India is where Brahma’s head was dropped into the ground. Lhasa in Tibet literally means “the place of the Gods”. Medieval Europe was bejewelled with shrines deified by a vision of Christ or of the Virgin Mary, or by the births, acts and martyrdoms of Christian saints. Shrines and trade, pilgrimage and travel, were all interwoven just as the sanctity of God and of the city were stitched together.
Sometimes the very process of reconstruction was sacred, as appears to have been the case in the ancient Peruvian city of Caral, with its pyramid temples. Love of place was real not abstract. In 431 BC the Athenian statesman Pericles beseeched his fellow citizens to love their city in his famous funeral oration: “I would have you day by day fix your eyes upon the greatness of Athens, until you become filled with the love of her.” The word for love that he used, eραστά or erastai, was the word for erotic not chaste love.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeI believe the scene depicted in the header is of Piece Hall, Halifax (with the Pennine hills in the background) and now fully restored i can attest to it being a magnificent public space. It serves many purposes still; for concerts, for artisanal shops, for eating and drinking and on a sunny day (not as rare as many might think in the shadow of the Pennines) it positively glows as the stonework warms up. I don’t live too far away, and visit regularly.
Having said all that, its magnificence owes nothing to the sense of the “sacred” that the author invokes. Yes, i understand what he’s getting at when he writes of religious sites being at the core of our urban expanses, but Piece Hall is a prime example of civic beauty which doesn’t rely on a religious sensibility. It does rely on a sense of confidence in ourselves, which has seemingly been lost. We can restore such a space, so those skills and aptitudes aren’t lost forever. Can we restore the space within us?
Isn’t that what the caption says?
Yup, it says that utiliarian is bad and goes on to argue that only a semi-religious experience can keep the jungle away.
The problem with artisan shops and cafes is that they are trendy and we all know what happens to trends – the next lot of councillors are voted in and don’t have a budget for proper maintenance.
Utilitarianism is a nice idea but it can’t easily be passed of from generation to generation – certainly not with modern people.
I presume SM must have had a different photo without the explanatory caption!
I suspect that after the War utilitarianism/brutalist got out of control when you see what happened to so many of our cities and even county towns.
Didn’t somebody even call it the age of ‘white hot technology’?
Yes, indeed! The version on my mobile phone didn’t include the black-box caption at the top right.
Then well spotted!
I have, and it doesn’t look any the worse having imbibed a couple of refreshing pints of cask ale in either of the excellent bars within the station buildings!
You suggest it’s not sacred, but about self confidence. Has it occurred to you that such confidence, such commitment to beauty, comes from a religious sensibility? Everyone keeps scratching their heads about why our ancestors had greater civic pride, as if that could be separated from their Christian worldview – one that sees magnificence as a divine virtue in which man can share.
To me, you seem the kind of secularist who is fully aware of the numinous experience, but is still reluctant to attribute it to its actual origin – the glory of God.
Yes, it’s occurred to me. Has it occurred to you that our ancestors had an understanding of numinosity (without the term itself) for many, many millennia before Christianity or it’s forebears?
Certainly, belief in the transcendental spans all cultures. The question is whether that yearning is ever truly fulfilled, and whether man has ever achieved a higher state of religious understanding.
This is where the Burning Bush enters the story, marking a significant break with pagan conceptions. This revelation, (“I am that I am”), this word of a righteous God, unites the ever-present numinous awe with the moral law written in every human heart. As Lewis writes:
The mere fact that humans have always been seeking does not mean there’s nothing to be found – in fact, it suggests the opposite. To be Christian is to believe that such sublime truth can be attained not through primal religious awe, nor any amount of pagan ritual, but only through Christ, who abides in us as the bread of life. Whether you believe that is up to you.
Fair enough. Clearly, i don’t, although i also don’t doubt that Christianity gave impetus to a certain communal ethic which proved to be very useful during the two millennia where it’s been in ascendency, at least in the West, and culminating in the Protestant work ethic.
I have great admiration, for instance, for the mediaeval church architecture which arose due to the beliefs extant at the time.
I disagree with your characterisation of primal awe as “religious”. That’s a later construct, which then became codified.
Glad I read this article just for your comment, well said
But they worshipped animals and natural events and included them in their artwork.
Agreed. We should absolutely design for human needs, including vibrancy, over stark utilitarianism. But there is absolutely no need for that to include religiosity – which could indeed be far more alienating than illuminating, for many.
A beautiful experience is worth it all on its own – and I suspect that it would be way easier to convince more people of the value of investing that in civic spaces, than to muddy the argument for such aspiration with any proselytism.
Some classical architects, even at least one working now, would hold that classical architecture and its proportions and orders were passed to by the gods or God. From the ancient Greeks and before, through Rome, Palladio, and on.
Interesting idea. I’d argue that classical proportions also tend to lend a certain “sameness” to architecture which modernity shouldn’t necessarily adhere to, and there’s no limit to beautiful architecture which doesn’t adhere to classical standards.
Saint-Ouen, Rouen for example.
Iron age dwellings. Beautiful and functional. Morris would be proud.
I wonder if you are referring to Quinlan Terry. I was slightly surprised that neither he nor Pugin were given a nod in the article. Nor, as you reference, the divine proportion which is one of those curious numbers found in nature. And not just in the constructions of the ancient Greeks (intentionally or otherwise). From my memories of equine biomechanics, I can tell you it even features in the pelvic bones of horses. The nearer to the golden ratio their proportions, the greater the athleticism. Not just a visual success story!
At the risk of over-commenting to this article, i find that absolutely fascinating! We must, however, beware of attributing anything other than evolutionary success to such natural phenomena.
Evolutionary advantage is not a straightforward system. Mutation by mutation can work for eg eyes – as Dawkins likes to describe. For other things there are problems. A hint of a wing, unlike a hint of sight, confers no obvious advantage. There are suggestions of stockpiling ie hanging on to advantageous mutations till they add up to something worth developing. Foresight in the ‘blind watchmaker’? I’m sure scientism will explain it away soon …
Seems like a plausible hypothesis with a questionable analysis. The general ideas of building more beautiful cities is commendable but the idea of making them Sacred is the Utopian Fallacy.
I recognize this article was not written as a slight of hand to Christianity but as an “equalitarian” homage to all spiritual communities. Like a Cultural Polytheism not dissimilar to Ancient Rome or Greece. But let’s remember those were cultures of Militarism that seized assets from other territories to build these beautiful cities and in the process the State accepted their Gods into the Pantheon.
Christianity does not accept other Gods. You can have your other Gods but Christians will not recognize them just as Atheists need not recognize Christianity. Ironically, Protestant Christianity paved the way for Atheists to be open in skepticism unlike any Religion before it. While there are certainly exceptions, it afforded fairly relentless criticism of its tenets. No other religious civilization wrote laws like the First Amendment that had a first order priority of protecting people that wanted to relentlessly mock the predominate religion.
The Byzantine Empire was an extension of the Roman Empire, it sought conquest and enriched itself. So did Spain/Portugal and many others and they did so under the banner of Christianity. While most Missionaries were probably men of Faith, the regimes themselves were Statist not “Christian Empires.”
When the purpose of a conquest is to accumulate gold to enrich oneself and his Earthly King, one has to question how “Christian” the Conquistadors and Naval Pirates were. Many did question Faith Doctrines developed by “Divine Kings” in 16th and 17th century Northern Europe. Christianity flourished when it became detached from the State Churches of Europe and many of those people fled to America where the first large scale experiment in Constitutional Democracy with a limited Federal Government was subsequently founded. From there, great towering skylines were built that are now mimicked all over the world. American cities were the catalysts for economic growth because they inspired a belief in the underlying greatness of the place. A greatness inspired by believe in a singular Deity and a world that had purpose.
My question is how do you build something sacred if its not inspired by greatness? How do cities become sacred themselves if they need to place equal value on all sacred beliefs? Is that not just Multiculturalism. We see now that building a cohesive society with no universal guiding principles is not possible.
Building more beautiful cities is something everybody can agree is a good thing but you need cohesive societies with an inspiring and sincere value set to make that happen. The only other way to build inspiring architecture is to just have an intrusive State that sets values on behalf of citizens and builds homages to its Dictators.
“The Byzantine Empire was an extension of the Roman Empire”.
NO it wasn’t, it WAS the Roman Empire.
I think “extension” is an appropriate word. Do you just see it as shifting of the Capital to a new territory? I agree there was continuity but the Empire was different in so many ways. Even if Byzantines considered themselves Romans at the time, we can look back now and see so many differences in governance.
Conceptions of Empire get pretty subjective. Most Anglosphere colonists thought themselves Brits until formal distinction was declared.
I’m an American and you’re a Brit so we’re going to see it differently. From the outside world, Australia appears to be a firmly British extension…which makes sense considering it was a penal colony. Kept the Essence and abolished the particulars.
I digress, I’m starting to sound like that goofball, Hegel.
I must disagree, the term only daters from the 16th century.
Given the longevity of the Roman Empire it is hardly surprisingly that there were differences in governance.
For example the Early Republic was was radically different to the Principate, as subsequently the Tetrarchy would be.
However the dominance of Christianity from c390 that endured for a further eleven centuries was one of the constant features.
As late as say 1204 you still had a monarchical system, with a professional standing army, governing an Empire of Provinces (now called Themes) paid for by regular taxation in hard currency and administered by an Imperial Civil Service. Most if not all of that would have been familiar to Augustus more than a thousand before.
Rome had metamorphosed into a universal culture that no longer depended on you being a tough, swarthy, homicidal dwarf, from the Tiber Valley.
ps. You do know where we sent our convicts before we found Australia?
Well sure but you can’t say shifting the center from Rome to Constantinople didn’t bring on all sorts of cultural changes. Different geography, demographics and etc. It also took on the character of Constantine as the Saintly Prophet which doesn’t feel Roman in the original sense. I respect what you’re saying. You have a better grasp on the historical factoids of Rome than I do but I still think there are enough fundamental changes to bifurcate Byzantium from Rome.
I realize the British brought many convicts over as indentured servants but the majority of US settlements weren’t penal colonies. Australia was settled later and more directly controlled by the Crown. I mean if you look at the Australian (or NZ flags) it’s got Crown Colony written all over it.
Well whatever we think, we know that THEY thought of themselves as Romans and who are we to deny them?
You are correct we didn’t have any Penal Colonies as such in our American colonies, but it was rather a convenient ‘dumping ground’ for recalcitrant Sc*tch and Irish troublemakers, and also as an alternative to hanging our own miserable thieves.
The problem with Australia was it was so far away that initially ‘volunteers’ were hard to come by, and after 1783 we had lost America, and had to find somewhere else.
How long Australia and NZ will keep their somewhat anachronistic flags is a moot point.
If you wish to build beautiful cities you only have to look to the Classical World. The Romans for example seamlessly blended art with utilitarianism, to produce such magnificent cities such as Lepcis Magna, Aphrodisias, Timgad and Sabratha. Beauty was at the core of their very existence.
Unlike the Greeks they also kept the ‘Gods’ under control and did not indulge in building unnecessary religious buildings. Thus in the aforementioned Timgad there are twelve sets of Public Baths or ‘Thermae’ and only five Temples, four of them rather small. In Rome itself again it was the great Thermae*, Caracalla, Diocletian etc that dominated the skyline, together with the Flavian Amphitheater (Colosseum) the enormous Basilica of Maxentius, and Circus Maximus. The beautiful and equally renowned Pantheon**is much by smaller comparison.
(*Each covering about twelve hectares.)
(** A temple to ‘all’ the Gods.)
This picks out the houses of the grand elites and grand buildings of the businesses of the burgesses as ‘the city’. For working people city buildings have always been plainer. Tenement blocks. Two-up-two-downs spread behind the factories. Blank-faced medieval buildings squashed together, squeezing the light out of the street. Sprawling and never ending mid-war estates. The grand buildings were those of the conquering heroes, financial titans and fortune hunters clamouring for social status, and often religious forgiveness.
The modern city of steel and glass apartment blocks of pods with terraces around park lawns is not bad. It’s only problem is that if you are on a newly developed street, modern design is so ubiquitous, it means it can be impossible to tell if you are in a part of London, Barcelona, Warsaw, Hamburg or Copenhagen.
As is utilitarian everything. The founding father of economics is Jeremy Bentham. He was balmy, and the discipline he sired has remained so.
I think you mean ‘barmy’? Unless you’ve been distracted by Alison Burrow’s reference to palm trees?
“Balmy” in the US.
Unfortunately, planning regulations, bat boxes, newt surveys and so on have made building anything other than the utilitarian unaffordable.
I read a very brief view of how cities were created that was based on hunter gatherers developing agriculture and slowly becoming more efficient and hence more food was produced than was necessary. This resulted on some people seeing an opportunity to have the easier life of buying and selling the excess food rather than doing the hard work of farming. Hence cities could be supplied with food from surrounding farms.
Very inspiring. Worshipping the god of money has brought us nowhere.
The new construction of a gated community just across the moat of ours tore up a large natural barrier of trees and shrubs so as to utilize every last inch of acreage space. They then planted imported palm trees and flowering shrubs to block our view of each other. This requires expensive regular watering and landscaping, which the natural woods did not.
Then, they built the houses right up to the trees and right next to each other: perhaps there is five feet between structures. And, worst of all, these houses are grey, featureless blocks of cement – starting at $650K.
I’ve dubbed it The Gulag.
Yet Piece Hall outlived it’s usefulness years ago. Had it been designed by todays standards it would have been torn down in the 19th century and replaced with buildings more useful for their times.
We can expect nothing else from a culture that believes a human is a purely material phenomenon, obviously. Fortunately for all of us, our immaterial nature isn’t easily concealed or suppressed. It’s (attempted) suppression/constriction results in reality squeezing it’s way out of the modernist box like expanding spray-foam insulation finding openings in walls. Weird shapes result.
The author’s use of the word “sacred” seems to have put off some commenters. That’s unfortunate because he makes a great point. A city should be much more than the sum of its parts.
I read sacred to mean something more like gracious or some combination of amiable/benevolant/urbane/beautiful/breath-taking…
Here in NYC, the Brooklyn Bridge is magnificent, rising through the mist. The Metropolitan Museum isn’t just a box full of art, it’s a monument to our love of art, a meeting place for friends and lovers, a landmark for homeward bound residents, an armature for the snow that falls from Heaven, etc.
The same is true for the big Library (with the big lions out front) and most of Central Park. (In fact there’s an Alice-in-Wonderland statue where pot-heads would leave gifts for other pot-heads, strangers, under the bronze feet of the Door Mouse, in reference to the song “White Rabbit”. An offering; not to the gods, but to the life we led in the City.)
Like a good story-teller embellishes a story as he performs it, a “sacred City” makes the lives of the people grander, more meaningful and more inherently creative.
I suppose the cultural obssession with efficiency and profit combined with the banishment of “beauty” from the arts has left us bereft of such privileges.
Utilitarian architecture – smacks of communism. And not just the cities, the unique beauty of our countryside is similarly besmirched. Very little of beauty or awe is built nowadays, the nation is losing its soul. We have fewer places to regenerate and those are becoming overcrowded. Mind you, the cost of labour has, thankfully, risen.
Or, more economically and (aesthetically) reverently expressed… in magical language that confirms words can softly caress, or feel like brutal punches in the stomach:
Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.
Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.
Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.
John Masefield
This is a truly excellent article, and we should strive to live by the philosophy and ideas you set out within it.
I often wonder why our educated betters – architects, urban planners and the like – all conspire to act against human beings’ best interests. They suffer the indebtedness and rigour of university only to make our lives more miserable. Are they not human themselves? Do they not also enjoy urban spaces which are attuned to satisfy human sensibilities? I guess it all comes down to money when you boil it down. But how refreshing it would be if they just did something for others for a change, and not for money and efficiency or shareholders. Anglo societies like ours seem particularly afflicted by all this. Our town centres are hideous. Litter blows everywhere. All over there seems to be social blight of every kind. The fight back starts with more of Piece Hall, and less of the shite we currently suffer. Maybe then there will be less broken windows.
Sometimes I do wonder, if there is more to it. A Faustian Spirit – whatever that is – (or a Freudian Thanatos deeply ingrained in the human psyche) that works against everything that is, including beauty, that negates everthing that builds up.
(Goethe’s Faust, Part One, Mephisto: “I am the spirit that negates. And rightly so, for all that comes to be – Deserves to perish wretchedly; ‘Twere better nothing would begin. Thus everything that your terms, sin, – Destruction, evil represent – That is my proper element.”)