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Let us imagine a tourist in the eighteenth century going from London to Paris to Turin and then back through Geneva and Brussels; this tourist might very well consider the local architectures of these locations was being lost beneath the homogenising influence of a new international style, the classical: same columns, same deployment of the classical orders etc. Anyone who looks at topographical prints of the eighteenth century might very well not be sure, (were it not for anecdotal foreground detail) whether the scene was St. Petersburg or Lausanne or Madrid. Even earlier precedents of International style could be identified: International Gothic, the Romanesque; all styles which prevailed from Durham to Palermo. Perhaps a Rough Guide author of the thirteenth century bewailed the internationalism of the ogival arch. ("The pilgrim may still discern a few traditional round arches....") Almost certainly a trawl through travel writings of seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe would bring to light some handwringing over homogenisation of architectural style: one thinks particularly of the Europeanisation of Russian cities under Peter the Great or Catherine in their respective centuries. Did the Lonely Planet Guide to St Petersburg 1784 write: "Despite its huge classical buildings and modern European infrastructure St Petersburg offers a wealth of cultural insights.....although the city is incredibly modernised beneath this veneer lies an uncompromised Slavic spirit. Traditional peasant carts can still be seen here and there amidst the speeding troikas…."

The supposed conflict between the old and the new (between the 'real' culture of the country and the global medium of modern architecture is a conflict that national tourist boards are all too aware of. They realise, sometimes with perplexity, that tourists will insist on wanting the ethnic, the old-fashioned. Socialist (or ex-socialist) countries are good at institutionalising this; they are masters of (god help us) the "folkloristic manifestation", the peasant dance troupe, ethnic dress. Indeed they have their own methods of encapsulating these things for the simpler minded tourist. (And that does not exclude those with a Rough Guide in their backpack.)

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