L'Architettura di M. Vitruvio Pollione colla Traduzione Italiana e Comento del Marchese Berardo Galiani..

Splendid edition of Vitruvius, published in large format with 25 detailed plates specially prepared for this edition. This is the best textual edition of Vitruvius, translated and edited by Berardo Galiani, the humanist scholar who reinterpreted the classical architectural canon for eighteenth-century sensibilities. A second edition of this version appeared later the same year in Siena. The Latin text has a facing Italian translation, with the Italian commentary printed below.

Vitruvius is the only classical architectural treatise to have survived into the modern era. All printed editions derive from four manuscript copies of which just three are now extant (the manuscript held by the Abbey of Montecassino was destroyed during the Second World War). Some textual differences exist between the known manuscripts; here Galiani's edition is remarkable for his careful collation and translation in order to provide the most accurate text possible. Furthermore, he was the first to produce a bibliography of previous printed editions of Vitruvius, with each entry accompanied by an informative commentary.

Vitruvius, while eminently practical in many respects, was deeply concerned with the ritual and mystical magic associated with construction, building and the Roman home itself. The siting of structures was of great importance within the Roman metaphysical canon, additionally his work contains much detail on auguries associated with building, relationships between good fortune and architectural design, and similar themes. The magical and metaphysical aspects of the treatise held great influence on the Renaissance imagination, and the book came to be venerated far beyond its actual intellectual content.