The course aims at offering the students the tools for analysing and understanding ancient architecture through a didactic strategy based both on an historical process-based outlook (crucial for an architect's background) and more practical design-based topics, highlighting traditional materials and building techniques, structural behaviour of traditional construction, principles of architectural design, the architectural language of classical orders.
During the lessons the students will be encouraged to understand a ruined construction through diagrams and sketches as well as to have a a structural approach to the building techniques used in Greek and Roman architecture. In order to gain a wide understanding of classical architecture the classes and site visits will focus on the aesthetical issues of classical architecture, the political significance of Imperial architecture in Rome, metrology, design issues, the context in which the buildings were designed and built, the historical sources, ancient treatises.