This graduate seminar focuses on theoretical issues concerning the study of imperial cities, with examples drawn from the Mediterranean in the late pre-modern through the early modern period (16th-20th century). Key issues include: concepts of imperial cities and capital cities, center and periphery, architectural intervention on the urban fabric, civic institutions, liminal spaces and spaces of exchange (marketplaces),flows of people and money, sources for the study of everyday life, surveying and mapping, the imageability of cities, and the representation of the city in textual formats. Case studies will include Istanbul, Cairo and Aleppo under Ottoman rule (in Turkey, Egypt and Syria of today), Meknes under Moulay Ismail (Morocco), Paris and Marseille (France) in the 17th and in the late 20th century. The seminar will also address the resonance of the imperial past for urban form and practice today. No background in specialized architectural history is required.