Roman Architecture.

II ARCHITECTURE. A clear picture of Roman architecture can be drawn from the impressive remains of ancient Roman public and private buildings and from contemporaneous writings, such as De Architectura (trans. 1914), the ten-volume architectural treatise compiled by Vitruvius toward the close of the 1st century BC. Roman City Planning. The typical Roman city of the later Republic and empire had a rectangular plan and resembled a Roman military camp with two main streets--the cardo (north-south) …

…to the interior of buildings. Although Roman concrete could be faced with a variety of materials, the most popular during the empire was brick. Indeed, during the first two centuries after Christ, brick first came to be appreciated as a building facing in its own right; brick-faced concrete quickly became the favored material for large buildings such as apartment houses, baths, and horrea, or warehouses (for example, the horrea of Epagathius, AD145-150, at Ostia).