
In his work PALAZZI DI GENOVA Paul Peter Rubens lays his focus on the palaces observable in the Genua of the 17th century in order to show Europe, specifically the northern part, the in his opinion magnificent Italian architecture of that time. Those palaces are described and especially thoroughly measured and depicted by Rubens himself. For each of the 35 buildings, 31 of them being palaces and 4 churches, a ground view plan of all floors, a cross section view and an illustration of the facade is shown for each of them. Additionally some palaces are looked at in more detail showing several detail illustrations about the applied orders and their implementation. In terms of organisation Rubens divides the book into two major parts, the first concentrating on the antique palaces, whereas the second part focuses on the ‘modern’ baroque buildings. The whole work is concealed on 86 plates, containing a total of 139 illustrations. The dimensions of the book present themselves in the following manner: The height is 398 millimetres, the breadth is 254 millimetres with a height of 57 millimetres while weighing in at 3100 grams. In accordance to the traditional book size this work presents itself as being in-quatro.