The title of Sebastiano Serlio’s book “Tutte le opere dell’architettura” translated to English means a collection of all of the books about architecture. It was written in the middle of the 16th century.
The first thing that I saw, was the thickness of the book. But, of course, it must be thick since, like the title already explains, the book talks about every important building in architecture. You could actually say that it is a lexicon about buildings. It is explained very detailed and then further shown with a lot of pictures in different perspectives. Actually, there are a lot of pictures that are accompanied by texts, since it is easier to imagine when you see it than when you hear/read it.
The cover of the book looks very noble. It is colorful and the size is between A4 to A5, so also rather handy. However, very thick.
Sebastian Serlio, the author of the book, was an architect and an architectural historian. He has written a whole collection of books on architecture. Serlio describes and explains how something can be built or designed. Since his books were translated into French, German and Spanish, while he was still alive, it made him to one of the most influential architects in the world.