In Our Time - Vitruvius and De Architectura

Episode Date: March 15, 2012

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.With:Serafina CuomoReader in Roman History at Birkbeck, University of LondonRobert TavernorEmeritus Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the London School of EconomicsAlice KoenigLecturer in Latin and Classical Studies at the University of St Andrews.Producer: Thomas Morris.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the program. 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.

The author's name was Vitruvius, and his masterpiece, The Ten Books on Architecture, is the oldest surviving work on the subject. It offers not just practical advice for designing and building temples and houses, but also a fascinating range of information on Roman engineering and technology, from aqueducts to water clocks.

Vitruvius' theories of beauty influenced Leonardo, and were taken up by some of the greatest names of Renaissance architecture. Every palladian building, from the banqueting hall in Whitehall to the White House, is indebted to Vitruvius. His ideas remain central to architecture until the 18th century and arguably long afterwards.

With me to discuss Vitruvus and architecture are Seraphina Cuomo, reader in Roman history at Birkbeck, University of London, Robert Tavanagh, Emeritus Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the London School of Economics, and Alice Kernig, lecturer in Latin and classical studies at the University of St. Andrews. Seraphina, Vitruvius was born about 90 BC and died 70 years later. Could you give us some idea of the Roman world?

world in those 70 years? Yes. It was a period of transition for Rome. After decades of civil wars, Rome was basically moving from being a republic to becoming what we now know as the Roman Empire. A new leader emerged during Vitruvius' lifetime. Octavian, who later took on the name of Augustus. He was the adopted son of Julius Caesar,

and Vitruvius said served under Julius Caesar. Augustus established an empire after defeating all the remaining opponents, and in 31 BC he seemed to have become the sole ruler of Rome. Some historians even call this period the Roman Revolution, to give you an idea of how much things could be said to have changed. So Vitruvius was writing at the time when there was political upheaval, new social groups were probably emerging and acquiring positions of power that they didn't have before. And even high culture in the form of treatises about rhetoric and philosophy seemed to be taken into account that a change was on the way. There's quite a bit of this in Shakespeare, isn't there, as well.

Vitruvius, he fought with Caesar, we think, in Gaul. Yes, he says so in the treatise. He actually doesn't mention Julius Caesar by name, but in addressing the treatise to Octavian Augustus, he says that he had served with his father. And he mentioned some of his colleagues, and he says that he was in charge of building catapults and other military machines.

machines. It's sort of siege missiles and attack missiles, the ballistic missiles. Yes. That would seem to have been his speciality because there's quite a bit on that in the book of, in his great book.

Is there much known about him? I mean, I say, you've already said he seems so served with, there's not a great deal known, is there? There isn't, unfortunately. Except a book that's lasted for 2,000 years. Yes. He gives us some clues in his book.

He mentions his service in the army and he also mentions that he was basically a protege of Augustus's sister Octavia. He also says that he built a basilica in Latium. So I think he's keen to emphasize that he wasn't just a military engineer. Evidence that is not just from within the text comes in the form of other authors who mention him. Primarily Frontinus, who wrote in the first century AD, says, that Vitruvius, the architect, as he calls him, probably invented a new gauge for a type of water pipe. So we can infer that Vitruvius was also active in another area it describes in the architecture, which is aqueducts and water supply systems. There are some inscriptions

that contain the name Vitruvius, but none of them. as being conclusively linked to our men. They seem to refer to different people. There's an inscription that talks about Avitruvius was an ex-slave or freedmen. If that was our vitruvius, it would actually be quite interesting, but it doesn't be impossible to pin it down exactly.

But we know his eyes in the first century BC. He served with Julius Caesar. He dedicated his book to the adopted son, Octavius, and he was taken up by Octavis' sister and given a pension, which he's very grateful for, he's lavish in his praise of the emperor for being so, and there's so much foresight to give him a proper pension to write this book. Alice Kearning, how great was, can we develop what Seraphina said?

Can we push on about what his practical experience was? Well, as Seraphina has said, we know really relatively little about what Vitruvius himself got up to, not least because he doesn't make his practical experience an important part of his text. So we know that he had some military experience, on the engineering side. It's possible when he was serving with Julius Caesar

that he was also involved in setting out camps on campaign, but that's something that we can only really speculate about. He presumably did have other experience of civilian architecture in addition to the basilica, which he tells us, he designed and constructed at a place called Farnum Fortuni on the Adriatic coast. And as Serafina has said, he was involved probably, he may even have served on the staff of Agripper,

Augustus's right-hand man, who was overhauling the drainage system and the water supply system of Rome. So he had probably a typical architectural career, certainly not a stellar one. And it's clear from some comments in the text that he's actually perhaps slightly frustrated about his architectural career. He complains about the fact that, that less skilled architects and less honest architects are getting more commissions and more impressive patrons than himself.

So a picture emerges maybe of a man who's slightly frustrated by his practical experience. And as I say, he does not promote his practical experience in the text. He derives authority from other things. But it would be fair to say that in this book, it's a hefty book, in this book, there's a lot of detailed remarks about types of brick and stone and wood and it sounds partly the work of a man and a practical man.

Absolutely. The work of a man who knows his staff and who knows a huge range of things. He knows about all sorts of different machines. He knows about different kinds of materials that you use, all sorts of different stones. He knows about the way you mix different paintings for wall painting. He knows all sorts of things. things. But he has derived some of that information from literary sources as well as from his own personal experience. Can you, is there any notion of why he wrote this book at this time?

Well, he tells us at the very start of the work when he dedicates it to Octavian Augustus that it's published in response to what Octavian is doing in the world right now. He says that initially he, when he saw that Octavian was so busy, conquering the world. He hesitated to publish in case he distracted Octavian from his important activities. But he then says that when he realised that

the emperor, the new emperor, was as much interested in building as in other things and that he was increasing the majesty of the Roman Empire, not just with new provinces, but with impressive architecture. Then Vitruvius thought now was the time to publish to help Octavian

with his building projects. It's clear that he's also tapping into a much wider interest in architecture at the time. As well as an awful lot of upheaval and civil war, Rome's Empire has been expanding. And one of the consequences of that is there's a lot of new wealth flooding to Rome and to Italy and all sorts of new cultural influences, which do translate into all sorts of things. But lots of wealthy Romans are building new villas in Rome or at the seaside. So there's a huge increase in architectural activity,

not just what Octavian is doing and what some of his political rivals are doing. And Vitrivis is tapping into that. Robert Tappan, can we go a bit more detail into these ten books? There's an enormous spread of information. Can you just give people some idea of the spread? The treatise is divided into ten books, which relates to the roles on which he set out the sections originally. And the principal aim within those 10 books is to set out what an architect does,

what sort of education an architect needs, and then the type of buildings and structures that an architect is responsible for, and where the principal ideas come from, the origins of the building types, and the importance of nature for an architect, the imitation of nature he upholds as being. absolutely an essential starting point for architectural design. And so the 10 books themselves are divided in a way such that the first seven deal with principles, broad principles of building.

So the education of the architect, again the origins of architecture, the notion of society forming people coming together, gathering around the half, the fire. becoming expert in particular skills and then developing buildings that meet their particular needs and of course the temple is the most important is the starting point of architecture in many ways because the enclosure, the sacred place is where people bring their

votive offerings and worship the gods and therefore it's the architect's role to make that place special to create an enclosure that glorifies the gods and aids the ceremonies that actually go with them. He talks about the move from early timber structures into stone. He can't always understand where some of the details in the architecture have come from. He has names for them, which he doesn't quite understand. He tries to interpret what they mean.

And then he goes on to talk about the particular temple forms, how they are modulated and in relation to the human form, the materials that should be used. And that's the first seven books. It deals with that broad cross-section of principles and building types, ending up with public buildings and spaces and the private house. and then the final three move into the area which he probably had most interest in, which was, well, the last book in particular is looking at the weapons of war that he worked on, and he's very interested in mechanics and the details of those, which become very difficult to understand for the reader because any illustrations that went with those ten books have been lost, and his use of language isn't always as precise and as clear,

as one would wish. There was this thing called the Vitruvian triad. Can you tell us about that? Yes, the Vitruvian triad is the notion of durability on one hand, which he called thermitas, utility, utilitas,

and beauty venustas. And these three elements come together in his thinking to create something which is beautiful which is coherent and you can't have one without the other one relies on the other

and this is again something which has become famous through history as a basis of good architecture, something which balance need and statics if you like with creating something which is beautiful and for him beauty resides in an appreciation of the natural world

Serafina How much had been written This is the major The only work in Latin on architecture That we have as I understand it And there have been very little written before And yet we go to a classical And mine these magnificent buildings

You would have thought there would have been more Was there much before Vitruvius and it's just been lost? I think there was quite a lot but most of it is now lost So Vitruvius does mention a number of authors, many of them, most of them, Greek, that he is drawing on for his work, but basically none of them survive. People like Ctesibius, Hermogenes, Agesistratus, are for us just names that we know of through Vitruvius.

The only literature that overlaps the contents of Vitruvius is the architecture that has survived, relates to military endeavors. So we do have surviving treatises that are earlier than Vitruvius in Greek about building catapults or actually about military architecture. Probably because there was more of an interest in this side of technology and architecture.

And so there was more interest in copying and replicating the manuscripts. But other than that, Vitruvius' is really the earliest and one of the very few treatises on architecture to survive from antiquity at home. He's drawing on other Greek scholars apart from those who might not have written an architecture, he's drawing on Greek mathematicians.

Can you develop his sort of, as it were, his reservoir of reading? Yes, I think given his image of the architect as what we could call a full-rounded intellectual, Vitruvius is very keen to mention as, if you like, forebears, not just other architects, but also mathematicians whose work didn't directly impinge on architecture, such as Archimedes, Pythagoras. So throughout the work, you will find mention of authors that we know primarily, to be mathematicians rather than architects.

But more than this being a case of Vitruvius actually using their mathematics, I think it's a case of Vitruvius wanting to show that the architect really is this intellectual cultured human being who knows about the mathematical foundations behind this practice. To take that on, Alice Gernick, what Seraphina was saying, and was hinted out by Robert.

There's a sense in which he's saying, look, we're important too. We have to have all worldly knowledge, the idea of an architect. You suspect that behind it is a feeling that you probably just thought we were engineers who knocked up these buildings and built catapults for you in war,

but we are as important to the state, as an army, important to the city is an important place. Now, can you develop his idea of what he thought an architect should be and should be recognized as being? Well, absolutely. Yes, in his day, certainly, you know, writing a few years earlier, for example, Cicero talks about the architect and ranks architecture and medicine as professions which are honourable for those whom they suit, but do not rank as high as oratory, say, or law. What Vitruvius is trying to do is to suggest that, in fact, architecture does rank as high as any of these noble disciplines. And to that end, at the start of book one, he sets out a very long list of all the disciplines which an architect must have knowledge of.

Such as, well, Serafina has already mentioned mathematics, musical theory, because that helps you understand acoustics within a building, but also fine tune the inside of machines. You need to know philosophy because it will make you fair and it will help you understand nature, as Robert has already said. you need to know about history, you need to be literate because you need to understand the origins of some of the buildings you're designing. You need to know about law, you need to know about geometry and really all of the things that make up a well-rounded Roman education.

And Vitruvius says that an architect who has sort of, he puts it, has mounted the steps of all of these studies can reach the temple of architecture at the top. So there he's almost implying that architecture somehow rises above all of these other disciplines. And he does, in the rest of the text, make it very clear that the role of the architect within society is a profoundly important one. Robert has already touched on the fact that at the beginning of book two,

Vitruvist sketch is a history of architecture, which turns into a history of civilization. Man began as a sort of an animal without shelter and then started building shelters for themselves and started competing to build more and more impressive shelters which turned into houses. And Vitruva says that through this building man developed other arts, other crafts and a notion of industry

and so progressed to civilisation. So architects have been important in the history of society and by the time we get to the end of the book we see architects storming in as very important advisors to military generals, and the penultimate line of the work actually credits architects with military victory. He says all these cities were liberated by the skill of architects. So he makes it clear that architects have a profoundly important, potent, political and military role now and always have done as well. And as you alluded to earlier, Robert, he has not, he has a great

knowledge of just the materials, doesn't he? But to talk about the theory, so we go between materials, we go between education, and then then we go to the theories. He has this, the influential sections of the book for later, which we'll be coming to, obviously, concerned proportions, or what he calls symmetria. What's his approach there? And why was, what was his approach there? His notion was that, and which was obviously something that he had inherited as a belief,

was that the body was a microcosm of universal harmony, so that in a way it was an analogy for all that was perfect in nature. He refers to Pythagoras and Plato, the idea of perfect numbers, and the fact that one can see those perfect numbers in the human form. and in the proportions of the human form, so that the foot is a sixth of the height of an idealised man. We have ten digits, and he refers to the fact that six and ten were both perfect numbers, according to platonic Pythagorean theory.

Six is perfect, they would say because it's the sum of one plus two plus three for six, for ten, one plus two plus three, plus four. but he says, you can see this, you can see this in the human form. Also, he states that geometry comes from the human form. So the figure that Leonardo, you mentioned earlier, produces the notion of the homogodratus with the figure without spread arms and legs inscribed within a circle and square.

Covered in geometry. Covered in geometry. is that idea that those perfect figures are at the basis of perfect architecture. So combining perfect number, perfect geometry, and putting them together, you create an architecture which reflects the natural world and which therefore an architecture with which one can honour gods. While you've been speaking, he seems to be reaching back to a previous idea, and bringing it into play for his own purposes. It isn't something he invented.

You refer to Plato. You refer to Pythagoras. So the idea was around of a human man, in this case, body, being an idea of proportion from which to start thinking about building. Yes, polyclitis in the 5th century, BC. He creates this figure, the Doriforos, the spearbearer, which was much copied during the Roman era, in fact. I don't think we only know it through Roman copies.

But people marvelled at it, thought it was a perfect human figure. And a canon of what's called a canon of human proportions was attached to that. So that it was believed that the relationship of the finger, the digit, to the palm, to the cubit, and so on. All these things are interrelated, that there's a modular system. And again, that that, for truth's this notion, based on that was that that modular system should be applied to architecture to create a coherent harmonious whole. And a rigid adherence to symmetry itself, wasn't that?

There was a rigid adherence to symmetry. But the interpretation of symmetry is slightly misleading. I think he's really talking about modularity. It's not just left-equaling right. It's to do with more of a three-dimensional coherence. Sarafi de Cuomo the style of the work how does he explain the style

of his work? This is partly a teaching book. How is he telling people to take up his style or the right style as he sees it? There is a bit of a mismatch between what Vitruvius thinks is doing and the way

his readers have judged him if you like. Vitruvius thinks is writing a deductive book which is very well organized and very well ordered. And above all, he insists that what he writes is super clear. Readers of his work through the ages have been a bit less unkind, more have been unkind.

They ever really believe that that's what he's doing. So the work has been accused of being unclear, obscure. the prose has been defined a cumulative as if he's really trying to pack too much into a sentence or on the other hand, yes, sentences that are too short. So I think he was aiming to create a new language. If you think about it, nothing like that existed in Latin. A lot of the technical terms he has to use didn't exist.

He tries sometimes to just transliterate previous Greek terms, Sometimes he tries to come up with new terms in Latin. So there is a bit of a gap between what is trying to do, which is this huge effort in creating a new language, a new technical language for architecture and the result. I think these days readers and scholars are keener to emphasize the similarities, the parallels between what Vitruvius is trying to do and what previous authors close to him,

like Cicero or Varro were also doing. Alice Kinnick, can you tell us what he said about the design of Roman houses? We had quite a bit about public buildings, about talking about the temples and so on. What about the houses? He talked about those as well, didn't he? Well, the same triad of principles apply when he taught.

He devotes one whole book, book six, to housing, and then book seven carries on the theme, and talks about interior decoration, paving, stucco work, wall painting and so on. And the triad of principles of durability, utility being fit for purpose, and beauty aesthetics applies. But interestingly, Vitruvius says it applies really mostly when you're building houses for wealthy men. Farm, he talks about villas, how you build villas. he talks about all sorts of farm buildings as well

he has a little digression on Greek houses to compare with the way Romans build their houses Italians build their houses and he's yes but he says that while farm buildings might be beautiful it's really only mostly important that the aesthetics are taken into account for villas he's interested in making sure that every room in every house

is fit for purpose, that it's angled appropriately. So libraries must face north so that the books don't get damp. Dining rooms face west to enjoy the setting sun and so on. And the houses themselves must be situated appropriately for the climate of the region where they're being built. And there are three types of temples, aren't there, Robert Tavner, the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. Is this where that does?

Is this where that idea sort of establishes itself? Well, temples as structures are effectively post-and-lintel construction, so they are vertical supports and taking horizontal beams. And what happens, well, mainly from the 5th century onwards, where it becomes much clearer. Fifth century BC is the idea that these columns have characteristics and again they go back to human figure as representatives of forms. So the Doric, which is related to the Dorian tribe around Crete and areas like that,

and the Ionic, which is seen as something more graceful as an architecture. So the Doric is that of a sturdy male. The Ionic represents a matron. And the Corinthian, he described. as really a capital rather than as a column type. You can put it on top of the ionic column as such, which is based on a story he tells rather beautifully of Callimachus, the sculptor who sees in a graveyard a funerary urn, a basket,

which has a stone slab on top containing the body of a young maiden and that the acanthus leaf grows through this. basket to create a beautiful form which he draws and perfects as a capital. And that's interesting because it shows the relationship between, again, necessity, going back to the triad, and how

beauty derives from imitation of nature, what one sees. And the role, therefore, of the artist, that it's not just about technology, it's about interpretation, about art. I think we've talked quite a bit about weapons. Is there weapons of war? Anything you'd like to add to that

are a fendry before we move on. Not really. I think Alice has made one of the main points that emerges from book 10, that Vitruvius uses his catalogue of machines. They're not just machines for war, because he also mentions weightlifting machines and water lifting machines and the water organ. But it basically uses this catalogue of machines

to reiterate the point that the architect is the behind them all and is in charge of even using these machines in the right way. It's like he's saying you can't do that without him. Interestingly, one of the examples he gives of an architect successfully using some machinery to defeat an enemy is it's about the siege of Marseille and the person who was conquered, albeit temporarily in this anecdote, was Julius Caesar. At the end of a text which is dedicated to the Emperor Augustus, adopted son of Julius Caesar,

we have a little anecdote about an architect conquering his adoptive father, and that testifies to the real power that an architect might wield. But the book didn't have a great, as far as we know, as far as I've read from what you three have written, the book didn't have a great influence in the few centuries following. There are no contemporary references to, to Vitrivious. So there's no obvious evidence that Vitrivis was widely read in his own day,

although that's not evidence that he wasn't either. In the 70s AD, Pliny the Elder, writing his great encyclopedia of the natural world, cites Vitrivious on three occasions as a source on things like timber and pigments and stones. Serafina has already mentioned that then, about 30 years later, an author called Frontinus, again, cites Vitruvius as an authority on pipe sizes. But those are the only relatively, I suppose, recent references to Vitruvius. Beyond that, we have a few scattered references in the third, fourth and fifth centuries,

which do increasingly give the impression that Vitruvius is emerging as the foremost architectural authority in antiquity. certainly a letter writer Sidonius Apollinaris in the 5th century AD talks about Vitruvus in a couple of letters and in one of those says that Vitruvius was the authority on architecture.

But it has to be emphasised, of course, that we're now in a Christian age and Vitruvius is writing about what would be regarded as pagan temples for the most part. So there isn't a direct applicability, if you like, of the temple types that he is going into great

deal of detail to describe in those centuries that follow. Are the instruments of war still useful reference points, the weapons of war? I think in terms of the mechanics that was used,

yes, but also in terms of just lifting large objects. I mean the whole pulley systems that he refers to are very important and certainly become important in places like Rome for moving obelisks around and erecting them.

Serafini, he began to be taken up again in the Middle Ages, didn't he? Vitruvius. Yes, but that was sporadic, possibly for the reasons that Robert was talking about. The real heyday for Vitruvius is not even

antiquity, it's actually the Renaissance. And that is the discussion. Well, let's move to the Renaissance then. This is obviously the rediscovery and they're bringing into, coming into Western Europe of Greek thought through translations, fall of

Constant over, all that sort of stuff which we've talked about quite quite a bit on this programme over the time. And with it came this book, I presume. Yes. The book, the day architectura, was copied. I mean, obviously this is before the age of printing.

It was copied badly and it became corrupted. The impetus, I suppose, in terms of Vitruvius being reinstated in the Renaissance. was Podja Braccellini finding in, well, what we know is Switzerland, in the monastery of St. Galen, a very good 9th century copy of Vitruvius, which he brought back to Florence, which in the early 15th century, of course,

was where the major thinkers were gathered. And the Eugenius's fourth Council of Florence was going on there, which was bringing people from all over. Europe. And there were key figures in Florence at that time. I mean, obviously Brunelleschi, Donatello, are best known Brunelleschi for the design of the Dome of Florence Cathedral, who was re-exploring the idea of large structures, large domical structures. And particularly Alberti, Leon Batiste Alberti,

who was an intellectual scholar who had a fascination for the arts and indeed architecture. He was the one who codified ideas on perspective, on painting and sculpture, and wrote his own treatise on architecture, the De Re Edificatoria, which is also arranged in ten books, and probably started as a commentary on Vitruvius.

But he found Vitruvus very difficult to understand, as Serafina was saying earlier. He thought that Vatrovis was someone who was probably trying to sound Greek to Latins and babbled Latin to Greeks. And he thought that without those illustrations and with what he calls the shipwreck of history, with the ruins of buildings around, many of which were covered in fluvial deposits and were only being excavated again with any real fervor, that it was actually quite difficult to understand what the troopers was on about.

So his ten books really begins to take over from Vertuvius at that time, because he reorders the books. But it is true to say, isn't it, that Vertuvius actually gave a huge impetus to the idea of architecture among Renaissance thinkers. And the idea of this proportionality, we have Leonardo's Vitruvian man, which have been discussed before. But we have that, and we have people taking that, the book, the Vitruvius' book on architecture,

and illustrating it themselves, for lack of his illustrations have been lost, and they're illustrating it themselves and passing it. And so deriving from Peruvius, we get Palladio and, as Roberts mentioned, the others. Can you just develop that a bit, please? Well, yes, it's certainly the case that Vitrivious was of more interest to Renaissance architects for some of the general ideas about architecture and about the role of the architect than for his detailed prescription. So, yes, his theories on proportion became very important,

but also his theorising of architecture and the emphasis on architecture as a science, not just a craft. And one of the reasons why Vitruvius appealed to Renaissance scholars generally, not just architects, is because of what he says about the education of the architect, which fits in very much with the humanist movement, which is moving away from a sort of the medieval scholastic education, which is focused more on narrowly defined professions and moving towards an idea of a more general, rounded education

to train men to be good citizens, not just to be a good orator. So what Vitruvius has to say about architecture as something that embraces all disciplines, appeals to Renaissance scholars generally, as well as the architects. So is there a sense of it, in which Vitruvus gave these great architects

or they emerged as very great architects in Florence and around that part of Italy, as gave them an impetus and a goal. Yes, I think he gave them also a sort of role model, an ideal role model

to aspire to. If you think about it, we could find the parallels and maybe they themselves are so parallels between Vitruvius situation and their own. On the one hand, you had this very

powerful depiction of the architect as the Renaissance man. Knows everything, knows theory, knows practice. He's able to build beautiful houses, temples, and so on. But on the other hand,

he is also at the service of often a patron, a political patron. So there is a parallel, not just in what the ideal is, but also in the effective political role, the Renaissance architects have with respect to their patrons.

Earlier Robert Avenue, you mentioned a crucial fact that, of course, Christianity had come in, and Romans regarded as pagans, and so it went out of fashion to put that way, and so forth. It's interesting that when the Renaissance architects get hold of it, Palladio, for instance, his churches are looking like temples.

aren't they? They have a distinct Greek temple feeling about them, although they're built as churches and the Roman Catholic cause, as it were. Yes, there was obviously the period is called the Renaissance. It's a rebirth of looking back to the classical world

and it was trying to push away what was seen as the barbaric architecture of the intervening period, Gothic architecture and so on. And Palladio's patron Trisino wrote a whole essay about the need to vanquish the goths from Italy. So there was a national pride in creating

an architecture and an architecture that blended both that of the pagan world and the aims of Christianity. So whereas buildings that followed on from Vitruvius, the big Baths, buildings with their big domes and so on, particularly the Pantheon in Rome, which was seen as one of the wonders of the world very much. What Renaissance architects do do is they take the cross form, so they extend those sort of unitary

structures like the pantheon, but they incorporate the dome and deal with the proportions of that dome to mark a very special place within the church, which of course again is where the altar is. And so in the end it's bringing together

different traditions, but in the process creating something new. And it's also a celebration of the greatness of Italy, which he, Juvius, was very concerned to assure the emperor that he was after doing, as it were. And he has one of the anecdotes in it is that in the north people are vigorous but a bit sick and in the south there, clever but a bit lazy, but the perfect persons are, well, around about Florence, aren't they, Serfina? Well, we have the same description in Greek sources, the very same,

except that in their case the best people are the Greeks. Would you say very briefly, Alice Kinnick, would you say that the Vitruvius influence was very strong in the centuries that followed? Vitruvius remains, you know, I think all architectural treatises almost, without exception, up until about the mid-18th century,

refer to Vitrivious. That'll have to do, I'm afraid. Sorry to come to it. Thank you very much. Alice Kernig, Saraphina and Robert Tavanagh. Next week we'll be talking about Moses Mendelsso, who brought together

Judaism and the German Enlightenment. Thank you for listening. If you've enjoyed this BBC podcast, why not try others such as the Forum, the discussion program about global ideas? To find out more, visit BBCworldservice.com slash forum.