The Architecture of the Eighteenth Century

by John Summerson

The architecture produced between 1700 and 1800 represents a classic perfection which no later age has equaled. The first half of the eighteenth century was pervaded by the spirit of the Baroque, epitomized most completely in palaces and churches: Schonbrunn in Vienna, the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, the dazzling theatrical churches and Residenzes of Germany and Central Europe. After 1750 architecture turned away from Baroque toward Neo-classicism, whose most characteristic types included private houses, institutional buildings and planned towns--Bath, Philadelphia and Washington, with their theaters, museums, hospitals and banks. Summerson provides a succinct and elegant summary of the entire period, bringing into focus not only the stunning beauty of these buildings, but also the background of ideas from which they sprang.