The first few pages in Serlio’s Seventh Book on Architecture, serve as an introduction. It is briefly described what purpose the book serves and why it is important to be acknowledged. This introduction takes up the space of 5 pages. After the first pages of introduction the book describes examples of buildings. The book is structured in chapters. Each chapter contains of a double page with one page of text and one page of image.
Each page of text contains of a heading, which is written in a slightly bigger font and a paragraph that describes the image. The text is written in a small italic font, which is rather hard to read. The paragraphs are justified but the last few lines get shorter and create a pyramidic kind of look. The text is fairly brief and doesn’t seem to give too much information about the building to the reader. It serves merely as an addition to the images.
The images take up the space of a whole page each. They seem to be more important than the text. Floor plans, views and sections of the discussed buildings are shown. Some images are also numbered or lettered to be referenced in the text. At the end of the book some more details issues are depicted, such as ornaments and facade details.
This structure of one page of text next to a page of images is continued throughout the whole book.
The book seems to me to be useful as a collection of architectural references.