Field Notes on The Colonial Middle Ages: Prolegomena to Architecture between Medievalism and Italian Imperialism

Imperialism matters, particularly in architectural history. But does medievalism also matter in our field? The reverberations of the medieval in post-medieval architecture are often seen as inconveniences or of peripheral interest in evolutionist, if not modernist, versions of architectural history. Yet the Middle Ages traverse non-medieval spatialities and temporalities, contributing to phenomena like colonialism. The essay proposes that imperialism’s exchanges with medievalism can be excavated at the intersection between architecture and the reception, revision, and resurgence of the medieval past — particularly as it unfolded in the construction of the Italian Empire in Africa and the Mediterranean between 1911 and 1936 — and thereby problematise the prevailing associations with modernism. A more balanced view of the ties between the Middle Ages and the post-medieval period highlights the modernity of responses to the past and draws attention to architecture between these responses and imperialism in cases other than the Italian one.