A highly original history of Western architecture and the cultural transformations that it represents. Little else made by human hands seems as stable as a building--yet the life of any structure is neither fixed nor timeless. Outliving their original contexts and purposes, buildings are forced to adapt to each succeeding age. To survive, they must become shape-shifters. In a refashioning of architectural history, Edward Hollis recounts more than a dozen stories of such metamorphosis, highlighting the way in which even the most familiar structures all change over time into "something rich and strange." The Parthenon, that epitome of a ruined temple, was for centuries a working church and then a mosque; the cathedral of Notre Dame was "restored" to a design that none of its original makers would have recognized. Altered layer by layer, buildings become eloquent chroniclers of the civilizations they've witnessed. Their stories span the gulf of history--From publisher description.