Abstract : In the concluding article of the main section of this issue, Antoine Picon evokes the earlier meaning of territory for administrators, architects and engineers, as lands that were integrated into nations or colonies by the early modern European countries. Picon traces how 18th- and 19th-century perceptions of territory with an emphasis on administrative separation fed into an attitude of both distance and sensitivity to landscape, as exemplified by the Romantic movement in painting and literature; a heritage that continued into the 20th century in architecture with its emphasis on rationalisation