De architectura (On architecture, published as Ten Books on Architecture) is a treatise on architecture written by the Roman architect and military engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio and dedicated to his patron, the emperor Caesar Augustus, as a guide for building projects. As the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, it has been regarded since the Renaissance as the first known book on architectural theory, as well as a major source on the canon of classical architecture.[1]
It contains a variety of information on Greek and Roman buildings, as well as prescriptions for the planning and design of military camps, cities, and structures both large (aqueducts, buildings, baths, harbours) and small (machines, measuring devices, instruments).[2] Since Vitruvius published before the development of cross vaulting, domes, concrete, and other innovations associated with Imperial Roman architecture, his ten books give no information on these distinctive innovations of Roman building design and technology.[3]
From references to them in the text, we know that there were at least a few illustrations in original copies (perhaps eight or ten), but perhaps only one of these survived in any medieval manuscript copy. This deficiency was remedied in 16th-century printed editions, which became illustrated with many large plates.
- ^ Kruft, Hanno-Walter. A History of Architectural Theory from Vitruvius to the Present (New York, Princeton Architectural Press: 1994).
- ^ Vitruvius. Ten Books on Architecture, Ed. Ingrid Rowland with illustrations by Thomas Noble Howe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 1999)
- ^ See William L. MacDonald, The Architecture of the Roman Empire: An Introductory Study (New Haven, Yale University Press: 1982): 10-11.