All these plans grew out of a desire to counteract what were seen as the central threats against life and happiness in the late 19th century: lack of light and air, unsanitary and overcrowded conditions and congested circulation that demanded the opening up of narrow streets and the restitution of "nature" in the form of green space, if not the dispersal of the entire city.
The early-to-mid-century masters of light and form are all present: Brassaï, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, their embrace of abstraction a kind of compliment to their more traditional documentary work.
Its original interior had been messed up a century earlier by Ewan Christian, architect of the National Portrait Gallery, with the removal of its box pews and galleries and by the later installation of hideous stained glass - examples of which remain as a kind of ecclesiastical two fingers to the rational 18th-century God of Light - in the Palladian-style Venetian east window.
For over a year, I wrote about my experiences as a postmodern bohemian B-boy in a 21st-century City of Light for PopMatters.com, a column called "Paris Noir".
By the middle of the century, in light of genocides, vastly destructive or transformative technologies and the seeming decline of religion, it was unclear to many intellectuals exactly what we humans were for any more.
The next one surveys the legal status of the site and the Jews during the nineteenth century in light of conflicting Moslem and Christian claims, as well as with the renovations of Moses Montiofiore in 1841.
In some of these floors (dated to the 8th century bce), rows of light pebbles form awkward geometrical figures against a background of darker stones.
"I see her as a new icon of popular culture for the 21st century, a beacon of light in these bleak times".
In a departure from his work to that point, which typically followed wholly fictional characters in present-day contexts, the film centres on the famous 19th-century partnership of light-opera librettist W.S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan; it earned him another Oscar screenplay nomination.
Of these, Santa Sabina is the gem: a perfect example of a fifth-century basilica, full of light and space.
I was more moved however by a painting of St Jerome looking downward with deep introspective eyes by the 17th-century French master of light Georges de la Tour.
