Umbrales

This is a book about doors. About the entrances to prehistoric sanctuaries, to Egyptian, Greek and Roman temples, to medieval churches, to fortresses, palaces and villas, about what makes them special and about how human beings have endowed them with a message and symbolism. We have erected millions of buildings, of all kinds, and we have always placed a door in them. We are threshold builders. The very essence of our species is language and movement, each of us is an innate traveler willing to explore the unknown and tell about it. And it is that every door marks a transit. The thresholds are a hybrid space, a moment between two realities, the border between two worlds and two states. The doors are linked to change and evolution, they can be the link between sleep and wakefulness, between light and darkness, but also the passage from life to death, from ignorance to wisdom. This book is therefore a threshold, and every threshold is an invitation to travel: from the House of the Vettii in Pompeii to the Menga dolmen or the Sainte-Foy abbey; from the Pantheon of Hadrian and the Arch of Titus to the funerary temple of Ramses III and the Basilica of San Marcos, passing by the Parisian Fouquet Jewelry, the Alhambra Palace of Comares, the Bauhaus building in Dessau, the Güell Estate , Castel Nuovo, the Portuguese Quinta da Regaleira or the Secession Building in Vienna.