Roman Echoes on the National Mall: The National World War Two Memorial

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The National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. is one of the most recent and popular destinations on the National Mall. Designed by the modernist architect Friedrich St. Florian, this monument’s overall design and its details are deeply rooted in the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome. In this lecture, Peter Schertz provides an in-depth examination of the WWII Memorial through comparison with the architecture of ancient Roman and a discussion of how Roman victory commemorations in art and architecture inform the visual vocabulary of St. Florian’s design.