Les Dix Livres d’Architecture de Vitruve, 2nd edition (Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture)

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Corrected and with notes by Claude Perrault

Chez Coignard, Paris, 1684, French

Nonfiction, Architecture

A treatise on architecture (De architectura) originally written by the Roman architect Vitruvius around 15 BCE, and published in English as The Ten Books on Architecture. It is a major source of information on ancient Roman building methods, design, and planning.

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Peter Pennoyer

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I had a copy of The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius (a 1960 Dover edition that I came across in 1975 in my family library) and was fascinated by the illustration of the orders. Later, I was fortunate to make friends with Lucien Goldschmidt, a book dealer on Madison Avenue in New York, who kept an eye out for architectural treatises. In 1979 I was able to acquire from him this beautiful edition by the polymath Claude Perrault, who designed the west facade of the Louvre. I love the large format, the rag paper, and the fine lines in the plates.

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