Classical Architecture: An Introduction to Its Vocabulary and Essentials, with a Select Glossary of Terms

This well-illustrated book describes the fundamental principles and various aspects of classical architecture, including a detailed, illustrated glossary that is almost a dictionary of classical architecture in itself.

Professor James Stevens Curl discusses in clear, straightforward language the origins of classical architecture in Greek and Roman antiquity and outlines its continuous development, through its various manifestations during the Renaissance, its transformations in Baroque and Rococo phases, its reemergence in eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century Neoclassicism, and its survival into the modern era. The text and illustrations celebrate the richness of the classical architectural vocabulary, grammar, and language, and demonstrate the enormous range of themes and motifs found in the subject.

All those who wish to look at buildings old and new with an informed eye will find in this book a rich fund of material, and the basis for an understanding of a fecund source of architectural design that has been at the heart of western culture for over two and a half millennia.
333 b&w illustrations

James Stevens Curl is Professor of Architectural History and Senior Research Fellow at The Queen's University, Belfast. He received his doctorate at University College, London, and in 1991-92 was Visiting Fellow at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge. His many books include The Victorian Celebration of Death, The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture, The English Heritage Book of Victorian Churches, and The Art and Architecture of Freemasonry (winner of the Sir Banister Fletcher Award as Best Book of the Year, 1992).