"Pure historicism" is a highly relative expression in the architectural design professions, since new buildings, interiors, and landscapes designed and built in historical styles almost always make use of technologies, methods, materials, and amenities not available when the styles in question first appeared. Few people today would want to forego the conveniences of modern plumbing, electricity, and air conditioning, and fewer still could afford the luxury of worshiping in a Doric temple constructed of Pentelic marble. Nevertheless, it is still possible to create new structures that, given these inevitable conditions, are authentic reinterpretations of established stylistic traditions, with the understanding that the very things that alter these traditions also serve to invigorate them.

In some instances, historicism may be most purely expressed at the detail level. On the whole, Alexander Pope's garden at Twickenham was a work of sheerest romantic fantasy. In its mysterious grotto, encrusted with colorful minerals, shells, and bits of glass, the poet could invoke his Muse while listening to the susurrant sonorities of flowing water in quiet retreat. Among its many other features, the garden also boasted a shell temple and an amphitheatre, but none of these held the same significance for Pope as the obelisk erected in memory of his mother in 1732 (appendix 1, no. 21).¹

Of Egyptian origin, obelisks appeared in European gardens from the time of imperial Rome onwards, and in early eighteenth-century English landscapes they often bore commemorative inscriptions. Sited symbolically at the western extremity of his garden in an elevated spot nestled amongst plaintive cypresses, Pope's obelisk honored his mother's memory with a Latin farewell of the most poignant simplicity: "AH EDITHA! MATRUM OPTIMA. MULIERUM AMANTISSIMA VALE."²

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin's Mount Saint Bernard Abbey (1840–44) was the first English monastery to achieve the status of abbey since the time of the Reformation (appendix 1, nos. 22a and 22b).

Pugin had studied the great Gothic buildings of Europe firsthand and had already begun work on the Houses of Parliament (c. 1836–60) when he started to draw up plans for Mount St. Bernard.

A devout convert to Catholicism, Pugin and many of his contemporaries perceived Gothic architecture not merely in terms of its potential for a stylistic revival but in terms of a renewal of the Catholic Church itself. Shaped by the Cistercian aesthetic of austere simplicity, the plan for Mount St. Bernard addressed the same functions as those of a typical medieval abbey, with its church, cloister, chapter house, refectory, scriptorium, and other utilitarian structures. Under the direct supervision of Pugin's builder, the monks themselves built the entire complex from locally quarried granite. As Pugin himself claimed,

Because of a shortage of building funds, Pugin's plans for a crossing tower and spire were never realized. Although Mount St. Bernard does not, as a consequence, represent Pugin's mastery of the Gothic style in such a spectacular fashion as his other completed projects, it does clearly demonstrate the important link between architectural historicism and spirituality. Pugin's Gothic must be understood, however, not as a specifically Cathlolic phenomenon, but as one aspect of an aestheticized medievalism that profoundly affected all of the arts of the Romantic Period.³

A man of strong spiritual convictions, British architect Quinlan Terry balks, nevertheless, at attempts to pidgeonhole him as a latter-day Pugin guilty of conflating professional practice with religious ideology. Although Terry has been described as a "new classicist" and his buildings have been placed on the "Evolutionary Tree of Post-Modern Architecture" by Charles Jencks, neither "classical" nor "post-modern" adequately conveys the depth and breadth of his historicism.

Indeed, Terry's work is brilliantly informed by the classicism of Palladio, but he is an equally masterful exponent of the great traditions of Italian Mannerism and the Baroque. Terry's use of ornament may be lavish, but he is no mere decorator: to the fullest extent possible he makes use of the highest quality of traditional building materials, thus ensuring both beauty and longevity in his work. Openly critical of modernist architecture, Terry deplores energy-inefficient structures devoid of character and destined for obsolescence.⁴

Terry's Veneto Villa (1989–91), a project in London's Regents Park completed for the Crown Estate Commissioners, was originally inspired by plans in Palladio's Quattro Libri (appendix 1, no. 23).

Owing to subsequent revisions, however, the design was substantially changed. Combining both the Doric Order (ground floor) and Ionic Order (second floor), the delicate scale and proportions of this villa recall other historic structures in Padua and the Veneto. Principal materials used include brick, stone masonry, and stucco.⁵