The Architectural Setting of “Empire”: The English Experience of Ottoman Spectacle in the Late Seventeenth Century and Its Consequences

Abstract

During a diplomatic mission to Adrianople (today’s Erdine) in 1675, members of the Levant Company recorded their observations of two festivals as well as an audience with sultan Mehmed IV. Using the lens of their own culture, the English both condemned and admired the activities and their architectural settings. Architects back home shared this “imperial envy” and used the Ottoman and other living empires as models for the idea of a new British nation with its own national style.