ABSTRACT
Although the classical vocabulary was used in British architecture from the sixteenth century onwards, the term 'classicism' was not used in architectural theory until the end of the nineteenth century. John Shute and Inigo Jones were among the first English architects to travel to the Continent to see the remains of Antiquity and Renaissance architecture with their own eyes. The origins of classical architecture in the pagan culture of Greece and Rome, and its use in the Catholic culture of contemporary Italy, also made the acceptance of classical architecture in Britain problematic, particularly in the early seventeenth century. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, Colen Campbell presented Vitruvius Britannicus as the British answer to classical architecture on the Continent, celebrating the good taste of the British nation against of the Baroque excesses of architects such as Bernini and Fontana.
