author
Vitruvius Pollio
Best known for the ten-book treatise De architectura, this Roman writer and engineer shaped how later ages understood architecture, building, and design. Though little about his life is certain, his ideas traveled far beyond ancient Rome and helped inspire Renaissance thinkers centuries later.
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 sure about Vitruvius Pollio, often identified as Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, beyond what can be gathered from his own writing. He lived in the 1st century BCE and is remembered as a Roman architect, engineer, and author whose work survived when so much other technical writing from antiquity was lost.
His lasting fame comes from De architectura (On Architecture), a ten-book treatise addressed to Augustus. In it, he wrote not just about buildings, but also about town planning, materials, water supply, machines, temples, and proportion. The book presents architecture as a broad practical art, joining usefulness, strength, and beauty.
Vitruvius became especially influential long after his own lifetime. During the Renaissance, artists and architects rediscovered his ideas, and his discussion of human proportion helped inspire Leonardo da Vinci's famous Vitruvian Man. Even today, he stands as one of the clearest windows into how the ancient Romans thought about design and construction.