By Lacey Pfalz From TravelPulse Four temples in the heart of Rome, including the site where Roman emperor Julius Caesar was assassinated, are open to tourist visits for the first time. According to the Associated Press, the temples, which are called the “Sacred Area,” are located in Largo Argentina (Argentine Square) and date as far…

The artists of the dark ages were neither blind nor indifferent to the perfection and transcendent beauty of classical ancient Rome that lay half-buried strewn in their midst. Medieval artists didn’t know they were “medieval” relative to those ruins, yet the humanists who subsequently began fostering a classical revival knew full well they were different….

If you had traveled with the Marquis de Lafayette to the Piedmont region of Virginia in 1824, you would have been amazed to come upon a beautifully proportioned village being built in the finest tradition of Renaissance planning. Ten pavilions, connected by colonnades extending from a great building resembling the Roman Pantheon, rose impressively above…

In 1784 Thomas Jefferson found himself in France as our first ambassador. While he was there he fell in love. Arrested by its striking classical beauty, the patriot became smitten with a small Roman temple in Nîmes known as the Maison Carrée (square house). Describing it as “the most perfect model existing of what might…

A column capital’s intricate decorative motifs, an arched window’s perfect proportions, a majestic Greek statue beneath a frieze—you’ll notice these fine architectural details in New York City if you take a moment to look up at some of the buildings, those landmarks that have been preserved over the course of the city’s history. Italian architect…

“Whenever it is proposed to prepare plans for the Capitol, I should prefer the adoption of some one of the models of antiquity which have had the approbation of thousands of years,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to French engineer Pierre Charles L’Enfant on April 10, 1791.  But why did Jefferson and America’s Founding Fathers admire classical…

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Dec. 21 that recommends classical architecture as the “preferred and default architecture” for public federal government buildings in Washington D.C. The order criticizes what’s become known as the “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture,” which largely replaced traditional designs with modernist ones in the 1950s. The Guiding Principles policy…