Who really built Europe’s finest Romanesque monuments? Clergymen presiding over holy sites are credited throughout history, while highly skilled creators remain anonymous. But the buildings speak for themselves.
This ground breaking book explores the evidence embedded in medieval monasteries, churches and castles, from Mont Saint-Michel and the Leaning Tower of Pisa to Durham Cathedral and the Basilica of Santiago de Compostela. Tracing the origins of key design innovations from this pre-Gothic period—acknowledged as the essential foundation of all future European construction styles—Diana Darke sheds startling new light on the masons, carpenters and sculptors behind these masterpieces and argues that ‘Romanesque’ architecture, a nineteenth-century art historians’ fiction, should be recognised for what it truly is: Islamesque.’
Speaker: Diana Darke
Diana Darke is a Middle East cultural historian with special focus on Syria. She holds degrees in Arabic from Oxford University, and in Islamic Art & Architecture from SOAS, London, and has spent over 40 years living and working in the region, for both government and commercial sectors. Among her publications are the bestsellers My House in Damascus: An Inside View of the Syrian Crisis and The Ottomans: A Cultural Legacy. Her book Stealing from the Saracens: How Islamic Architecture shaped Europe (published by Hurst in 2020), received three Book of the Year 2020 awards. Its sister volume, Islamesque, has been selected by Daunts as a History and Current Affairs Book of the Year 2024. She is a Non-resident Scholar at Washington DC’s Middle East Institute, a respected Middle East think-tank.
Date: Wednesday 18 June
Time: Amman 6pm, UK 4pm
Location: Online only (zoom)
