As Alice’s brain I picked the Xenotheka library. I chose architecture as the topic of conversation. I used basilica as the term for search. The explore button is many-sided and that’s the reason why I used this instead of the Find button. I didn’t quite get the wanted results. That’s why I changed the topic from architecture to thing and I got a lot more relevant result. What I also tried is typing the name of the book in the search but it didn’t reach what I wanted. As I noticed the second search was the most successful so I used that and got a couple of books I can compare to mine.
The book called Old Saint Peter’s, Rome edited by McKitterick amongst a couple of others was a very interesting book I found. The analyzation of the old St. Peter’s is very similar to the Delle Basilliche antiche. There are a lot of illustrations on how it was built, the placement of different parts in the building itself but also the explanation why it was done the way it was.
The second book I found is called The stones of Venice by John Ruskin which was first published from 1851 to 1853. This one explains parts of over eighty different churches. For example, arches or cornices. The content of the book isn’t very similar to the Delle basilliche antiche. What I found important are the illustrations and explanations. The representation is comparable to the one in Arnaldis book. This might have to do something with when the book was published. There aren’t even hundred years apart between the two books.
On one hand it is hard two compare books with each other but on the other when one knows what exactly to compare, it becomes easier.