Housing complex in Alcabideche, Portugal, Part 2. Housing has always been key to modern architecture in Europe, and interestingly, remains a relevant topic throughout the old continent today. I visited some of the most seminal works by Portuguese architects who have tackled this topic with fervor and commitment.

Cafe do Cais, Portugal. During my first visit to Porto, the northernmost city in Portugal, I strolled through the charming historic neighborhoods and streets lined with beautiful facades, of course, stopping far too frequently to sample freshly baked pastel de nata, the country’s famous custard tart.

Over the past decades, many European cities and towns undertook robust and sympathetic revitalization programs within their historic centers. By transforming narrow, picturesque streets into human-friendly environments—often restricting vehicular access to the city centers—the notion of a pedestrian zone was re-invented; at least in contemporary terms, as I am not sure that medieval streets were places of visual or olfactic charm.

The Paris Metro. Over the years, when visiting cities, one of my favorite pastimes has been to roam deep underground in the metropolitan transit systems of today’s dense urban capitals. Be it Chicago, Berlin, Hong Kong, London, New York, Tokyo, or Paris and metro, métro, MTR, tube, underground or U-Bahn, navigating below street level is fascinating and a reality check on a city’s identity.

About miniature metal buildings. While the practice of architecture can be traced back to the first architectural treatise by Roman architect and author Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, the education of an architect is rather recent in the history of our profession. Morphing from the French Ecole Royale des Arts into the famous Parisian institution of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, this 19^th century schooling became the world’s first educational system to train architects. Based on a rigorous curriculum where the professor was master, most future graduates were expected to serve their professional careers completing governmental projects under France’s President Napoleon III.

Church Architecture of Arantzazu, Basque region. I remember it being a cold and windy November day when I first visited this site; a place of pilgrimage that I had never heard of before. Located in the Basque region of Spain, a short hour north of the medieval city of Vitoria-Gasteiz, the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Arántzazu (1955) is situated at the end of a road, just before touching the clouds and the sky.