City Travel Guides > Books > Architecture

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.Palladio and Palladianism (World of Art)
City Travel Guides > Books > Architecture
by: Robert Tavernor

April 02, 1991
Andrea Palladio, probably the most famous architect in the western world, stands at the beginning of the movement called Palladianism. So successful was the Palladian formula that it was consciously revived outside of Italy and in other times, first by Inigo Jones at the court of Charles I in the early 17th century, by Colen Campbell and Lord Burlington in the early 18th century, and by Thomas Jefferson and others in the New World. In each case, what was appealing about Palladianism was more than a matter of style: it was the fact that it expressed a way of life and a humanist philosophy, deriving ultimately from ancient Rome but enriched by the thinkers of the Renaissance and the Augustan Age.

Sir John Summerson, reviewing ... Read More:
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.The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance (World of Art)
City Travel Guides > Books > Architecture
by: Peter Murray

1969-11
I have many books on the Italian Renaissance (60+) and this ranks near the top. Concise, authoritative and with innumerable insights not found in many much longer and more expensive books.

Cannot recommend it too highly. I have immediately ordered the companion volume on art in the renaissance.

Buy it.
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.The Lives of the Artists (Oxford World's Classics)
City Travel Guides > Books > Architecture
by: Giorgio Vasari

August 14, 2008
I have many books on the Italian Renaissance (60+) and this ranks near the top. Concise, authoritative and with innumerable insights not found in many much longer and more expensive books.

Cannot recommend it too highly. I have immediately ordered the companion volume on art in the renaissance.

Buy it.
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.Leonardo (Taschen 25th Anniversary)
City Travel Guides > Books > Architecture
by: Frank Zollner, Johannes Nathan

October 05, 2007
I have many books on the Italian Renaissance (60+) and this ranks near the top. Concise, authoritative and with innumerable insights not found in many much longer and more expensive books.

Cannot recommend it too highly. I have immediately ordered the companion volume on art in the renaissance.

Buy it.
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.The Lives of the Artists (Oxford World's Classics)
City Travel Guides > Books > Architecture
by: Giorgio Vasari

April 02, 1998
This is a long, long book with a great deal of information. Clocking in at over five hundred pages and covering about thirty artists of the Italian Renaissance, it is fairly comprehensive and detailed.

Some of Vasari's 'facts' have been discredited over the years and so the reader should not take everything here as gospel and indeed should be using this as a supplementary text with other material to get the best use out of it. Nevertheless it remains an important contemporary text and one of the first books on 'art history' ever produced.

I have to admit that I found it extremely hard going. There are great long lists of works and their subjects and the patrons of artists which it is easy to get bored or confused by ... Read More:
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.The Renaissance Garden in England
City Travel Guides > Books > Architecture
by: Roy Strong

1984-04
A fine peice of garden history that shows up many publications in the field for the facile coffee table books they are. This thoroughly researched, lucidly written work places garden design squarely in its cultural and political context. The narrative is perhaps tighter in the 16th century chapters before the increasing rate of change of the 17th century makes it a little less coherant, but the only real quibble is that the author does not look at Tudor gardens beyond the royal palaces and prodigy houses nor how the design of great Jacobean gardens (particularly the royal gardens) filtered down to the lesser nobility. This might have given more examples to work with, even if it meant stretching the time frame slightly later.
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.The Piazzas of Florence: Mapping a Renaissance Spirit
City Travel Guides > Books > Architecture
by: Lisa McGarry

May 19, 2008
I bought this book to take with me on holidays, so glad I did, can't imagine anywhere else I would rather have read this book. It was really easy to read and found myself in all the places McGarry was describing, it's so nice to read a reveiw of a city from the eyes of someone who lives there, I especially liked the way she describes the smells, the people and the colours. After reading the book I feel as though I may have to go and sample Florence for myself and I should have to visit the cafe she describes so vividly to meet some of those people she talks about.
I could definately tell that McGarry has a distinct flair for this kind of writing, the book just simply flows from page to page making it impossible to set down. It was a very ... Read More:
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.The Mirror of the Gods: Classical Mythology in Renaissance Art
City Travel Guides > Books > Architecture
by: Malcolm Bull

April 27, 2006
I bought this book to take with me on holidays, so glad I did, can't imagine anywhere else I would rather have read this book. It was really easy to read and found myself in all the places McGarry was describing, it's so nice to read a reveiw of a city from the eyes of someone who lives there, I especially liked the way she describes the smells, the people and the colours. After reading the book I feel as though I may have to go and sample Florence for myself and I should have to visit the cafe she describes so vividly to meet some of those people she talks about.
I could definately tell that McGarry has a distinct flair for this kind of writing, the book just simply flows from page to page making it impossible to set down. It was a very ... Read More:
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.Palladio (Penguin Art & Architecture)
City Travel Guides > Books > Architecture
by: James S. Ackerman, Phyllis Dearborn Massar

July 25, 1991
I bought this book to take with me on holidays, so glad I did, can't imagine anywhere else I would rather have read this book. It was really easy to read and found myself in all the places McGarry was describing, it's so nice to read a reveiw of a city from the eyes of someone who lives there, I especially liked the way she describes the smells, the people and the colours. After reading the book I feel as though I may have to go and sample Florence for myself and I should have to visit the cafe she describes so vividly to meet some of those people she talks about.
I could definately tell that McGarry has a distinct flair for this kind of writing, the book just simply flows from page to page making it impossible to set down. It was a very ... Read More:
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.Architecture in Britain, 1530-1830 (Yale University Press Pelican History of Art)
City Travel Guides > Books > Architecture
by: J Summerson

October 20, 1993
This book, for many years now, the standard text, is always readable and generally reliable. Not much of interest architecturally speaking, passed by Summerson's eye, without him noting it. In an age like ours, when plain speaking scholarship is long gone, probably due to lack of new material than lack of talent, this book is likely to offend due to its bland format and refusal to delve beyond the surface. But this lack of depth is actually its strength as a text. If you want a book on the subject without frills, this will be the one for you. As a historian and not an architect, Summerson sometimes gets caught up in details that architects would be unlikely to find useful, but nevertheless, even those bits are informative.
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