Washington Needs an Arch

Washington Needs an Arch

The triumphal arch holds a very important place in the annals of Western architecture and urbanism. In Roman times it played a lofty honorific role, even though most Roman arches commemorated civic achievements and personages rather than military victories. The freestanding monumental arch was a syncretic creation, structurally derived from Etruscan gateways and decoratively enriched with Hellenistic architectural and sculptural forms. Its disti…