
The city of Bath sits in a bowl of hills at the southern tip of the Cotswolds, at a point where the River Avon forms a loop around a short peninsula. It was here that the Romans established their city of Aquae Sulis, and it was here too that eighteenth-century society settled in the refined luxury of the architecture we now call Georgian. This is the architecture that gives this comparatively small city its international reputation.
The built scenery is dramatic. When viewed from one of the hilltop vantage points, the light golden local stone seems to be everywhere, relieved only by the green roofs of the Snowhill Housing Estate on the east side and the blue gas holders to the west. Almost all of what we see before us dates from after 1725.
But Bath is not just a museum of a long-passed social phenomenon. It is a living urban organism, of just about the right size to live in. The Victorians and Edwardians built here, sometimes indecorously, and contemporary architects including Nicholas Grimshaw, Aaron Evans and the Brutalist Smithsons have work worth visiting in or near the city. This guide covers all of Bath's notable architecture, with specially commissioned photographs, and an introduction outlining the social and economic forces that have shaped the city.