‘An easy introduction to both the grammar and the superstructure of classical orders’

– The Guardian

Sir John Summerson's account of classical architecture has every right to be called a classic itself. With the help of diagrams, glossary and a wealth of photographs, the reader is taken easily from the great originals of Greece and Rome through the recapitulations and innovations of the Renaissance, the rhetoric of the Baroque and grave statements of Neo-classicism to the 'stripped Neo-classicism' of the moderns - every age using the classical language to make its own statement. For this edition the volume was completely redesigned and the number of illustrations more than doubled.