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of earlier temples. For a start it is larger than most, and made of better stone, and its decorative sculpture was freshly considered and very well executed. The building is unusual in having eight columns across the façade instead of the usual six, and in being made with optical corrections, the effect of which is perhaps barely noticeable, but the shaping of the stone demanded more care and skill than was usual, and signals a preoccupation with precise refinement of the type. In addition to the decorative frieze running round the building above the columns, which was usual with this type of temple, there was another frieze running round the outside wall of the inner chamber, visible between the columns, and that had never been done before. So there was no doubt that the Parthenon belonged securely within the tradition of Greek temple building, but it was more magnificent and splendid than the temples that had gone before. It is inconceivable that it would have happened, but just suppose that instead of building the Parthenon, Phidias, Ictinus, and Callicrates had collaborated on a work that had turned out like the Sagrada Familia. How would it have looked to the citizens of Athens in the 5th century BC? It would have looked totally bizarre and barbaric. It would not have showed them that its designers knew or cared about their culture. When they looked at it they would not have seen any of the familiar signs that would have prompted in them feelings of recognition and being in familiar territory. Indeed our word ‘barbaric’ has its origins in the Greeks’ word for foreigners, which tells us what they thought of them.

Familiar and exotic cultures

If we are more appreciative of foreigners and their works than were the ancient Greeks, we are also prepared to read and misread signs in buildings that belong to cultures other than our own. A monument such as the Taj Mahal (Figure 23) is as rooted in its own traditions as the Parthenon, and it can be understood with reference to those traditions, as one of a long line of funeral monuments, which surpasses the others by being unusually extravagant and exceptionally beautiful. The image of the Taj Mahal is circulated all over the world, but when that happens, it is rarely read with knowledge of its local culture. In the international culture of global tourism, the Taj Mahal is presented as an alluringly exotic image of the whole subcontinent of India, just as the Sydney Opera House is used to signify Australia. These images become familiar around the world, and are part of the tourist culture. So it happens that when a traveller in a foreign land manages to track down these well-known sights and photographs them, what happens is not so much a confrontation with something original and unaccountable, as a recognition of something familiar. The classic tourist photograph (‘Here I am, standing in front of the Eiffel Tower’) is not a way of learning about world architecture – there are clearer photographs with better explanations in the guidebooks – but of having evidence that one belongs to the privileged élite that travels the world. More people than ever before can travel to the far side of the world, and do so without great difficulty and without needing any very compelling reason for doing so. News and ideas are transmitted round the world with even greater facility and speed, as certain aspects of our culture become globalized. If we want to know more about the Taj Mahal and its significance, then we need to study the architecture of Islamic northern India, and Persia, from where the architect came. If we want to know more about the meaning and significance of the forms of the Sydney Opera House building then we do not find them in the Australian outback, but in Denmark, and perhaps the Mediterranean, where the architect had built himself a house. The cultural influences are not tied to the place in the same way.

23. Mausoleum of the Taj Mahal, Agra, India (1630–53); architect: Ustad ‘Isa (dates unknown). The famously beautiful mausoleum of the Taj Mahal was built as