Most of the book “Villas of the Ancients Illustrated” is written in grouped style. Some parts although are written into two columns, e.g. Part one: book II Ep. XVII describing the villa Laurentinum. There, the left-hand side is written in Latin and its translation into English is on the right. The same method is used in Part three book V ep. VI describing Tuscum. Also the list of subscribers and the index are written into columns (as lists). The font size is the same throughout the whole book, except for the titles which are bigger. However, the font type varies many times (normal, bold and italics). Furthermore, the heading of the chapters are written onto the topline of every double page (e.g. Remarks on Laurentinum) giving an orientation to the reader.
Sometimes there are small images included at the beginning or end of a chapter for decorative reasons but most illustrations come always after some descriptive passages: After Part one and Remarks on Laurentinum, the villa’s floorplans, elevations and a general plan of the site is shown. Captions give explanations on the shown features. It is the same approach in Part two: Villas of varro columella. In Part three the illustrations of Tuscum contain in addition to the floorplans and the plan of the site a perspective drawing of one building part. Most of the images are shown on double page, some of them are on a single page and very few are in-text or in the footnote.
The purpose of the images is clearly to visualize the written and in order to prevent possible misunderstandings. Even though they are very schematically drawn they have a high level of detail and a few decorative elements for example trees or stones.
The book as it is written suggests the use of it as a reference. “The Villas of the Ancients Illustrated” should work as an inspiration of building owners for their own projects.