Memory and Modernity focuses on the first project of the renowned nineteenth-century French architect and theorist Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, the restoration of the Romanesque church of the Madeleine at Vezelay in Burgundy. This is the first book-length study to approach the work of Viollet-le-Duc from the perspective of institutional and social history.

Kevin D. Murphy situates the Vezelay restoration project within the government architectural bureaucracy that emerged in the July Monarchy. Drawing on extensive archival records, he describes the controversy that arose...