Editing Gottfried Semper (section)

=== Early life (to 1834) ===
Semper was born into a well-to-do industrialist family in [[Hamburg]] in 1803.<ref name=NDB>{{Cite web |last=Hölz |first=Christoph |date=2010 |title=Semper, Gottfried |url=https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/gnd118613154.html |website=Neue Deutsche Biographie |language=de}}</ref> When French troops occupied the city in 1806 during the [[Napoleonic Wars]], the family moved to nearby [[Altona, Hamburg|Altona]], at the time part of [[Denmark]].<ref name=NDB /> The fifth of eight children, he attended the [[Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums]] in Hamburg before starting his university education at [[University of Göttingen|Göttingen]] in 1823, where he studied [[historiography]] and [[mathematics]]. He subsequently studied architecture in 1825 at the [[University of Munich]] under [[Friedrich von Gärtner]]. In 1826, Semper travelled to Paris in order to work for the architect [[Franz Christian Gau]], and he was present when the [[July Revolution]] of 1830 broke out. Between 1830 and 1833 he travelled to [[Italy]] and [[Greece]] in order to study the architecture and designs of [[classical antiquity|antiquity]]. In 1832, he participated for four months in [[archaeology|archaeological]] research at the [[Acropolis]] in [[Athens]].
During this period he became very interested in the [[Biedermeier]]-inspired [[polychromy]] debate, which centered on the question whether buildings in [[Ancient Greece]] and [[Ancient Rome|Rome]] had been colorfully painted or not. The drawn reconstructions of the painterly decorations of ancient villas he created in Athens inspired his later designs for the painted decorations in Dresden and Vienna. His 1834 publication ''Vorläufige Bemerkungen über bemalte Architectur und Plastik bei den Alten'' (''Preliminary Remarks on Polychrome Architecture and Sculpture in Antiquity''), in which he took a strong position in favor of polychromy - supported by his investigation of pigments on the Trajan's column in Rome - brought him sudden recognition in architectural and aesthetic circles across Europe.[http://hdl.handle.net/10919/36755]