The full title of the book is “Delle basiliche antiche” and it was written by Enea Arnaldi in 1769. In the first place this book is directed to architects but in my opinion also to the religious people.
The author was born on 29. April in Vicenza. He was an Italian architect but also a humanist. “Delle basiliche antiche” was not his first book. He focused himself on different kind of buildings and wrote books specifically on these topics.
This book is divided in a few parts. At the beginning there are the first and the second part. After these, follow the description and then the disposition. The two parts are divided in a great quantity of chapters which lead to different conclusions.
A lot of drawings and illustrations are contained in the book. Since it is only about basilicas, their description is not enough for one to imagine how they exactly look like. These illustrations help to comprehend the plans and the reason why the basilicas were built in a specific way. They also show different structures of these buildings. Their size is also big in comparison to the book itself. These pages are folded a couple of times so the drawings fit into the book.
The size of the book is approximately 20x25cm and its thickness circa 2cm. There aren’t a lot of pages, only 135. The text although, is written in a tiny font. One can also see special and kitschy fonts when a new chapter starts or when something needs to be specified. As already mentioned, the drawings are always illustrated on much bigger paper that the one which was used for the other pages of the book. This helps to see the details and not only the big picture.
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