Why Are Our Sports Stadiums Becoming More Like Roman Amphitheaters?

Today’s Shift to Status-Based Seating Is an Unwelcome Return to the Rigid Social Divides of an Imperial Age

More than 230 amphitheaters, among the largest and most memorable monuments left to us by the Romans, survive in cities from northern England to the banks of the Jordan River.  The Romans built amphitheaters for more than 500 years in a range of sizes—from a capacity of a few thousand to 50,000 in the Colosseum—using a variety of techniques. The amphitheater at Pompeii was built in the first century BCE by workers who excavated hillsides, placed terraced seating on the packed soil, and erected retaining walls to hold the rows …

Bite-Size Shanghai

Mi Young is a Chinese Canadian illustrator currently based in New York City. Young, who often draws from her own experiences as a global citizen, loves to explore characters and their interactions …

Journalist Frances Anderton | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Journalist Frances Anderton

I Think I Detest the Beverly Center

Frances Anderton, the longtime host of the weekly public radio show DnA: Design and Architecture on KCRW, currently covers Los Angeles design and architecture for print and radio. She is …

How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Turned New York Into the Center of the World | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Architecture Turned New York Into the Center of the World

Though the Wisconsin-Born Architect Called the City a ‘Pig Pile’ and ‘Incongruous Mantrap,’ It Made Him a Superstar

The Guggenheim Museum in New York City is architecture as sculpture—a smooth, creamy-colored, curved form that deliberately defies its square, gray urban context, and succeeds by harnessing the pure abstraction …

The Washingtonians Who Fought to Keep Their City as the Nation’s Capital

Rivalries Over Its Political Symbolism, and Damage From the War of 1812, Nearly Destroyed the City

As the national capital, Washington, D.C. always has carried special meaning—representing both the federal government and the United States as a whole. No matter how Americans might feel about the …

Why Do So Many Public Buildings in the U.S. Look Like Greek Temples?

In the Architectural Void of a New Nation, William Strickland Borrowed from Ancient Athens to Express America's Democratic Ethos

President Andrew Jackson took a keen interest in the construction of the federal mint in Philadelphia, a grand, columned edifice, inspired by the temples of ancient Greece, that opened in 1833. Jackson was not a man …