The exception to this is the principal entry façade - a critical architectural element that communicated the mission's status and is the focus of the building's exterior ornamentation. The exterior character of many frontier missions is utilitarian as the buildings often served defensive, as well as religious, purposes. The resulting hybrid product reflected priests' attempts to attract and integrate native populations and their representational art forms. In practice, Christian iconography was not always purely applied, but often blended with native symbols and executed by native artisans. These icons acted as objects of both inspirational worship and moral instruction. Among these features, the monumental altar screen in the church apse was the focus of elaborate decoration and a canvas of religious symbols, or icons. Priests also used these features to transform the church into a colorful three-dimensional religious textbook for new converts. Sacred ornamentation –figures of saints, altar screens (retablos), paintings, and stencil designs –became important teaching tools. Builders used these features to reinforce individual stylistic expressions using stone, molded brick, plaster, wood, ceramic tile, and pigment. Architectural features –entablatures, pilasters, window surrounds, columns, beams, and surface decoration –were integral to the church designs. Often beginning as no more than a temporary shelter from which to celebrate mass, the church building and later support structures evolved over time as the population of converts grew and resources for construction became available.įor worshippers, ornamentation in mission architecture played two significant functions. At the core of every mission community, regardless of its size, was a church building as its spiritual center. Some mission communities were near dispersed agrarian communities, while others were in the center of the most densely formed native settlements. Missions were located adjacent to established native settlements that also provided labor for mission construction and maintenance.
The Spanish government and religious orders established missions to convert existing populations to Roman Catholicism. Missions featured in this travel itinerary are rich cultural landscapes that span the spectrum of mission development from isolated and quickly abandoned chapels to comprehensive, self-sustaining communities covering hundreds of acres. This is an important book for architectural historians and for those interested in colonial and postcolonial studies, as well as Italian studies, African history, literature, and cultural studies more generally.Postcard depicting a float in the "Battle of Flowers" parade in a rally to support restoration of the Alamo (Mission Valero) in San Antonio. The movement between these forces is reflected in the structure of the book, which proceeds from the broadest level of inquiry into the Fascist colonial project in Libya to the tourist organization itself, and finally into the architecture of the tourist environment, offering a way of viewing state-driven modernization projects and notions of modernity from a historical and geographic perspective. What made the tourist experience in Libya distinct from that of other tourist destinations was the constant oscillation between modernizing and preservation tendencies. McLaren argues that the "modern" and the "traditional" were entirely constructed by colonial authorities, who balanced their need to project an image of a modern and efficient network of travel and accommodation with the necessity of preserving the characteristic qualities of the indigenous culture. Although most tourists sought to escape the trappings of the metropole in favor of experiencing "difference," that difference was almost always framed, contained, and even defined by Western culture. Architecture and Tourism in Italian Colonial Libya shows how Italian authorities used the contradictory forces of tradition and modernity to both legitimize their colonial enterprise and construct a vital tourist industry. Against a sturdy backdrop of indigenous culture and architecture, modern metropolitan culture brought its systems of transportation and accommodation, as well as new hierarchies of political and social control.
To be a tourist in Libya during the period of Italian colonization was to experience a complex negotiation of cultures.
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