In Europe,especially in the nineteenth century,architecture was often grouped with painting and sculpture as one of the fine arts.The implications of this for the writing of the history of architecture have been profound.While challenges to this approach to architecture were deeply embedded within the reforms that culminated in the emergence of the modern movement,the rise of an autonomous approach to the history of architecture has,at least in the English-speaking world,been a much more recent development.Among the other reasons for questioning such an approach is the way in which it interferes with the writing of a global history of art or architecture.And yet what is lost when the fine arts are no longer considered as inextricably related?