Los Cuatro Libros de la Arquitectura

The Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio was one of architecture’s most influential figures. For classical architects the term Palladian represents a vocabulary of architectural forms that embody perfection and beauty. More important even than Palladio’s buildings is his treatise I quattro libri dell'architettura (The Four Books of Architecture), the most successful architectural treatise of the Renaissance and one of the two or three most important books in architectural literature. First published in Italian in 1570, it has since been translated into every major Western language.

This is the first new English translation of Palladio in over 250 years, making it the only translation available in modern English. Until now, English-speaking readers have mostly had to rely on a facsimile of Isaac Ware’s 1738 translation, and the eighteenth-century engravings prepared for that text. This new translation by Robert Tavernor and Richard Schofield contains Palladio’s original woodcuts, reproduced in facsimile and correctly positioned, alongside the text.