Vitruvius and De Architectura

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Vitruvius’ De Architectura. Written almost exactly two thousand years ago, Vitruvius’ work is a ten-volume treatise on engineering and architecture, the only surviving work on the subject from the ancient world. This fascinating book offers unique insights into Roman technology and contains discussion of the general principles of architecture, the training of architects and the design of temples, houses and public buildings.The rediscovery of this seminal treatise in the 15th century provided the impetus for the neoclassical architectural movement, and Vitruvius exerted a significant influence on the work of Renaissance architects including Palladio, Brunelleschi and Alberti. It remains a hugely important text today, two millennia after it was written.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Serafina Cuomo 6 episodes
  Reader in Roman History at Birkbeck, University of London
• Robert Tavernor No other episodes
  Emeritus Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the London School of Economics
• Alice Koenig No other episodes
  Lecturer in Latin and Classical Studies at the University of St Andrews

Related episodes

• Pliny’s Natural History
  
  8 Jul, 2010 500 Science
• Strabo’s Geographica
  
  10 Apr, 2014 910 Geography and travel
• Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists
  
  27 May, 2010 700 Arts
• Pliny the Younger
  
  12 Dec, 2013 870 Latin and Italic literatures
• Architecture and Power
  
  31 Oct, 2002 720 Architecture
• Edward Gibbon
  
  17 Jun, 2021 900 History
• The Augustan Age
  
  11 Jun, 2009 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Aeneid
  
  21 Apr, 2005 870 Latin and Italic literatures
• Archimedes
  
  25 Jan, 2007 510 Mathematics
• Tacitus and the Decadence of Rome
  
  10 Jul, 2008 930 History of the Ancient World

Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

---

Programme ID: b01d2kzx

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01d2kzx

Auto-category: 720 (Architecture)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. A little over 2,000 years ago, a retired Roman soldier and engineer wrote what's probably the most influential book in the history of architecture.