ABSTRACT
In 1423, some time after inventing perspective but before beginning the dome, Brunelleschi went to Rome, where he spent several years surveying the classical ruins, so that he could bring the spatial lessons of antiquity back to Florence and thereby transform architecture into its modern form. For Vitruvius, the classical temple is defined, classified and represented by its exterior, the proportions of its orders. If it is too much to claim that the interior, and issues of use and occupation which follow on from a consideration of the interior, formed no part of its identity, it is at least true to say that Vitruvius, when presenting the temples, spends no time talking about them as enclosed or inhabited spaces. To the modern movement, the Acropolis presented a proposition about columns and platforms, a structural and geometric order under which lay another, new proposition about space.
