Description:
You don't have to be an architectural historian to reap the multifarious rewards of this gorgeous volume. There may be one square root too many for the math-challenged multitudes, but otherwise this book's brilliant, clearly written text should appeal to classicists, abstract art admirers, and lovers of historical mysteries--hark, fans of The Name of the Rose--to suggest just a few of many possible audiences. Already in its third printing in Germany, the lushly illustrated book offers Heinz Götze's reasoned arguments tying the design of the Castel Del Monte, the mysterious, singular, southern Italian fortress built under the revered leader Frederick II, to the Mediterranean culture of the Middle Ages and to the intricacies of Arab geometry circulating in North Africa at the time. Götze is steeped in his subject: he has led architectural digs at other sites to search for European antecedents for this extraordinary eight-sided star of an edifice (there are none), and he draws on a seemingly vast knowledge of the delicate geometries of celestial and terrestrial designs of the period that stretch from France to Syria. His impeccable scholarship seems to liberate him from the pedestrian prose of many such books (there are cheerily triumphal exclamation points scattered throughout this one). While the book is extremely learned and contains much material that is over the head of the ordinary reader, Götze manages to urge readers to stretch their intellects. The hardest part, ultimately, is sitting in an armchair to read this book, rather than standing at the Castel Del Monte in person and gazing at it with newfound understanding. --Peggy Moorman
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