Tartaria

An empire scrubbed from the maps, its architecture reassigned. Every old photo of a grand building is evidence, adherents say.

The theory holds that a global empire was erased a century ago — its world's fairs demolished on schedule, its orphan trains repopulating a reset world, its architecture reassigned to builders who allegedly lacked the means. As history it collapses immediately. As a question it doesn't: why did every city build exposition palaces of impossible grandeur and then burn them within the year? The academic answer is plaster. The photographs stay strange.