Here is the definitive introduction to one of the great epochs in the history of architecture. Focusing on buildings of the period between 1418 and 1580, and the 35 key architects who designed them, it gives equal weight to social context, technical innovation and aesthetic judgement. Generously illustrated throughout with photographs, drawings, plans reconstructions, it brings into vivid relief the extraordinary flowering of architectural genius between the birth of Brunelleschi and the death of Michelangelo, a turning point in Western culture whose riches and whose pleasures prove themselves yet again to be literally inexhaustible.