Architecture

For the environment work, I decided to have a look into the French architecture.

From what I can find, France has quite a wide variety of architecture due to its history. It has Roman, Gothic, Italian influences (from the Renaissance), Baroque and Rococo.

In terms of the Renaissance buildings, it's more of an altered version of Gothic rather than a new style. Architects took influence from the Italian Renaissance style and applied it to Gothic, altering the Italian techniques to suit French tastes.

When Napoleon came into power, he made sure he could dominate the country. To assert his power, he applied Ancient Roman architecture to their style. Napoleon took Classicism, applying a neo-Classic style to the architecture to assert his power and it extended through the early 1700's, early 1800's (when Napoleon was in power) and managed to survive right up until the early 1900's. He did this because, of course, the Romans are considered as one of the most powerful military strengths the world has ever seen and Napoleon used this to assert his power.

So the architecture around the Napoleonic era had a heavy influence from Roman culture, which is what I'll be focusing on. Maybe for older buildings, I could also apply the previous architectures (but at this stage, I probably shouldn't have to).

Reference: http://www.safaritheglobe.com/history_france.aspx 12:00 06/11/2012

In each of these you can see influences from the Roman empire - supporting pillars, intricate designs, all trying to assert power in some way.

The second image is from Ljubljana, a city built during the Napoleonic period, being on either side of the Austrian Empire and for some time on Yugoslavia. Considering its architecture would be mostly Napoleonic, it's probably wise to look further into this city.

Reference: http://princess-ville.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/from-israel-back-to-europe.html 14:09 06/11/2012

Ljubljana has its own castle, so it's probably a good idea start there in terms of inspiration for the castle.

I also had a look for "the best castles of France" to see what kind of elegant castles they have and draw inspiration from those as well.