The ancient city is an architectural palimpsest.

Recent Examples on the Web

Still, the portrait accrues meaning when viewed as a palimpsest. Alexandra Styron, New York Times, "Their Parents Were Holocaust Survivors. That Wasn’t Their Only Secret.," 11 Feb. 2020

Islamic empires were living palimpsests, their many-layered societies comprising a dizzying array of religions, sects and ethnicities. Tunku Varadarajan, WSJ, "‘Islamic Empires’ Review: Revisiting a Glorious Past," 31 Jan. 2020

What remains is a palimpsest of culture and history, as layered as a cross section of the earth itself. Christopher Bollen, New York Times, "Who Was Carlo Scarpa?," 18 Feb. 2020

His weapons were painted with a palimpsest of names and references, many of them to historical figures associated with the Crusades and other Christian wars against Muslims. Hari Kunzru, The New York Review of Books, "For the Lulz," 10 Mar. 2020

The plot of the first Frozen is an obvious palimpsest of script drafts with a nonsensical heel turn at the end, sufficiently ridiculous to be mocked via summary by the snowman Olaf in one of the sequel’s few genuinely funny sequences. Ross Douthat, National Review, "Frozen 2 and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker: Return of the Disney Juggernauts," 9 Jan. 2020

Dating him forces her to reconceptualize the city not as a symbol—a palimpsest of elsewheres—but as a real location. Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, "Leslie Jamison and the Anxiety of Authorship," 3 Oct. 2019

Georgetown is a good place to glimpse such palimpsests, which include the cobbles and streetcar tracks on O and P streets. John Kelly, Washington Post, "In Georgetown, some streets have been renamed again and again," 31 Aug. 2019

In the spacious interiors, walls are pared back to brick or sanded down to a palimpsest of paint layers resembling an expressionist canvas. Cnt Editors, Condé Nast Traveler, "These 6 European Apartments Are Basically Private Design Hotels," 23 Aug. 2019

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'palimpsest.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.