What the Capitol Says: American Neoclassicism
...established through the timeless principles of liberty and order...
The Netherlands: Water, Tolerance, and the City That Shouldn’t Exist
On our first evening on the houseboat, we settled onto the small deck nestled into the side of the Dutch barge with a drink as…
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Brussels: The Second Reading
Brussels was cleaner than we remembered — the soot that had darkened Sainte-Catherine on our first visit was gone, the church bright now where it had been dull. A single night in the capital, this time without day trips or rail connections outward. The city concentrated itself accordingly.
The Space Needle: What Was Gained, What Was Lost
The Space Needle was never meant to last. Built in 110 days for the 1962 World's Fair — a fair whose theme was Century 21, meaning…
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The National Mall: Reading the Axis
In 1791, a French-born engineer handed the new American republic a plan for its capital that it has spent two centuries trying to live up…
Barcelona: Arriving Into Catalonia’s Crisis
Somewhere between Valencia and Barcelona, my phone rang a few times. I let it go. But it wasn't the routine coordination I had assumed. We…
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The Eiffel Tower: What the City Rejected, Then Claimed
We had been here before, Aaron and I, in a different Paris — before the fence, before the glass walls, before the security lines. That…
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Belgium: The Country That Contains Two Countries
The train from Breda was not what we had planned. Belgium, it turned out, was more than we had anticipated either — a small country with two languages, two cultures, and a particular dry humor about holding both together. A week based in Brussels, moving outward by rail into Flanders and Wallonia.
Den Haag: The City That Governs Quietly
On a Thursday morning we stopped at Boulangerie Michel on a quiet street in Den Haag, sat down with croissants and café at the owner's…
Amsterdam: Designed for What It Couldn’t Stop
The flat was on the Prinsengracht, third floor, its windows facing directly out over the canal. We arrived midday Friday, pulled the suitcases up the…
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