A Review of ‘a History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals’

A Review of ‘A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals’ as a resource material for Ancient Rome

A History of Architecture is a book written by Spiro Kostof and published by the Oxford University Press in 1995. It is a revised edition with the revisions done by Greg Castillo. The original drawings were done Richard Tobias.

This book is huge source of knowledge that gives us an overview of the historical background the involved the founding of Rome and even prior to that, also included is a whole chapter on the Hellenistic Greece in which get to know what happened in Greece and how that city came into being and where from did the people come who later came to be known as Greeks and the Romans.

The core of our study from this book is done from the chapter 9 called Rome: Caput Mundi. It begins with the early Roman architectural history and then we read about how important was the curve to the Romans how dedicatedly the incorporated it in their design inventions like the Arch and the colonnade. We then come to read about the Roman city of Pompeii in order to study it in comparison to Rome. We read about its components as a city and a lot of diagrammatic information is included in it. We then study the Public buildings of Pompeii. We learn about he origins of the form of the Roman basilica and the Roman forums even though it is known to be of obscure nature.

As religion did play an important role in the history of Rome we can not possibly ignore its role in the history of architecture that it had an effect on. Here as interesting insight to the similar form follows function can be found in the words of the great Roman Architect Vitruvius. He said that the temples must not be built according to the same rules for all the gods alike since the performance of the sacred rites varies with the various gods.

We then come to the place so entertainment where we get to learn about the amphitheatre