The Past: Buried Above Us

BLDGBLOG has a fantastic post on the interconnected mountain fortifications used by the Austrians and Italians in World War One. If you thought the Maginot Line was insane, wait until you see this. Geoff Manaugh’s write-up is as smart as the mountain trenches were crazy:

…the idea of the Alps being riddled with manmade caves and passages, with bunkers and tunnels, bristling with military architecture, even self-connected peak to peak by fortified bridges, the Great Mountain Wall of Northern Italy, architecture literally become mountainous, piled higher and higher upon itself forming new artificial peaks looking down on the fields and cities of Europe, that just fascinates me—not to mention the idea that you could travel up, and thus go further into history, discovering that the past has been buried above you, the geography of time topologically inverted.

Also: great to see that BLDGBLOG has a book coming out—not so great that we have to wait until 2009. (via cosma shalizi)

• archaeology
• architecture
• war
• World War I