VITRUVIUS
THE TEN BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE
TRANSLATED BY
MORRIS HICKY MORGAN, PH.D., LL.D.
LATE PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND ORIGINAL DESIGNS
PREPARED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF
HERBERT LANGFORD WARREN, A.M.
NELSON ROBINSON JR. PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
CAMBRIDGE
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1914
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Description: Study of architecture
and its principles and associated subjects like the planning of towns. The
translation was started by Morris Hicky Morgan, but he died before finishing the
last four chapters of book ten. These were finish by an associate.
The photographs and drawings Morgan had detailed for the first 6 books were
included. It was not know what his intensions for the later books were.
Classification: Arts and
Architecture / Architecture
Publication Date: 1914
Length: 320 pages
Illustrations: black and white photos and drawings
Book attributes: Printable / No code required to
open book
Book ID: GC-TBA-Morgan
Download Size: 14.4 MB
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CHAPTER IV
THE SITE OF A CITY
1. For fortified towns the following general principles are to be
observed. First comes the choice of a very healthy site. Such a site
will be high, neither misty nor frosty, and in a climate neither hot nor
cold, but temperate; further, without marshes in the neighbourhood. For
when the morning breezes blow toward the town at sunrise, if they bring
with them mists from marshes and, mingled with the mist, the poisonous
breath of the creatures of the marshes to be wafted into the bodies of
the inhabitants, they will make the site unhealthy. Again, if the town
is on the coast with a southern or western exposure, it will not be
healthy, because in summer the southern sky grows hot at sunrise and is
fiery at noon, while a western exposure grows warm after sunrise, is hot
at noon, and at evening all aglow.
2. These variations in heat and the subsequent cooling off are harmful
to the people living on such sites. The same conclusion may be reached
in the case of inanimate things. For instance, nobody draws the light
for covered wine rooms from the south or west, but rather from the
north, since that quarter is never subject to change but is always
constant and unshifting. So it is with granaries: grain exposed to the
sun's course soon loses its good quality, and provisions and fruit,
unless stored in a place unexposed to the sun's course, do not keep
long. ....
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