| | The just several year-long vigorous growth of Art Nouveau produced remarkably original works of art. The preceding roughly half a century was the period of Historicism, which was of a universal character and fed on the architecture of the former ages; basically it was not a style but rather an attitude. The most distinct form of style of Historicism was Neo-Renaissance, which left its footprints primarily on the formation of the cityscapes in Central Europe.
It was the French authors and architects (Percier and Fontaine, Grandjean and Famin, Letarouilly) who „discovered“ and published on the Renaissance architecture. In Central Europe it was Munich and Bavaria, which played a major role in its early acceptance. The Renaissance was defined by the concepts of urban culture, individual freedom, scientific thinking, thus it represented a kind of ideology. The Italian Renaissance perfectly suited the world view of the 19th century middle class and the image they formed of themselves. The architecture of the Renaissance was of additive nature, and it was characterized by the repetitive use of doors and windows and the easiness to be further developed. It was appropriate for creating resembling buildings, uniform facades or rows of streets and cityscapes.
In Central Europe Vienna provided the model; even though public buildings displayed a wide variety of (neo) styles, but apartment buildings were built essentially in Neo-Renaissance. Many large cities and even smaller towns in the region were reshaped or evolved in a similar manner. Ornate palaces, modest apartment buildings and one-story buildings were erected in this style. In many cases the individual buildings are not of a significant value, however, in their totality they preserve the character and the traditional culture of the location. This is the context that Subotica (Szabadka) has to be viewed from, the architectural heritage of which so much has been done for recently.
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