author
Vitruvius Pollio
Known mainly through a single surviving book, this Roman architect and engineer helped shape how later generations thought about building, proportion, and design. His ideas traveled far beyond ancient Rome, influencing architects, artists, and scholars for centuries.
3 Audiobooks
An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author
by Vitruvius Pollio
The Ten Books on Architecture
by Vitruvius Pollio
Vitruvii De architectura libri decem
by Vitruvius Pollio
About the author
Little is known for certain about his life, and even the full form of his name is not completely secure. He is usually identified as Vitruvius, or Vitruvius Pollio, and is believed to have lived in the 1st century BCE during the late Roman Republic and the age of Augustus.
He is famous for De architectura (On Architecture), a ten-book treatise that is the only major work on architecture to survive from classical antiquity. In it, he wrote not just about buildings, but also about materials, machines, water supply, town planning, and the qualities an architect should have.
His lasting reputation comes from the reach of that book. Rediscovered and studied closely during the Renaissance, it influenced generations of thinkers and artists, including those interested in ideal proportion and the relationship between the human body and architecture.