Footnotes to a History of Architecture
Kristina Marie Darling

1. Three of the darkest rooms, long since cordoned off from visitors.

2. Here she would hang the portraits one by one, straightening their tiny wooden frames. Her delicate hands.

3. "I wanted to preserve the sequence, its faultless order. From the corridor I heard him sing the last notes of Orphèe et Eurydice.  But beyond my window, the most pristine snow."

4. Cornice.
1. The uppermost part of a classical entablature.
† 2. Any of various ornamental bands, most often for concealing.
‡ 3. To furnish or finish.
4. A mass of snow, ice, etc., projecting over a mountain ridge.

5. The frieze depicts a series of attempts to stave the avalanche. Despite several recent excavations, the lower portion of the piece remains obscured.

6. According to Spiro Kostof, author of Settings and Rituals, the building is itself a daguerreotype of the inhabitant. Thus volition could be said to function in much the same way as silver and mercury.

7. Because each house contains a hidden staircase, leading only to a set of empty rooms, one would classify Zembla as the most introspective of these snowbound empires.

8. Translated from the Russian as dissonance. Meaning the disparity between interior and exterior.

9. As a result, the girl suffered from a rare form of claustrophobia. Every night she sought a new cathedral. Even the grandest arcades leaning towards her.

10. Note the tiny doves etched into every marble balustrade.

11. Compare, in this case, to an inland sea.