Monumentality by numbers

Monumentality can be defined in different ways: it involves a combination of great technical ingenuity, high levels of skill, the devotion of vast amounts of time to building, the type and range of the resources, and the sheer size of the task (Brunke et al. 2016: 250). As one can see in this volume, the range of objects and tasks associated with monumental endeavors is broad and manifold (Cousin or Pacheco in this volume). In this article, we do not want to (re)start a discussion about what monumentality is or is not (see Introduction to this volume), but to put forward a method of quantification. Our thesis is that if monumental build-ings were common at some point in time, not all of them were truly special; or in other words, some buildings seem to be more monumental than others. It also seems that by way of calculation and statistics, we can put forward our own opin-ion on the title of this volume, as it appears that at least in our case, size did not matter