This delightful and erudite book is about the afterlife of ancient architecture and landscape architecture. At the center stands Francesco Ignazio Lazzari (1634–1717), a busy and learned patrician who lived in the important Umbrian town of Città di Castello in central Italy. Lazzari held several roles: antiquarian and guardian of the civic pride of Città di Castello, amateur architect, prolific playwright, and practicing notary. He had a decades-long project to research and reconstruct Pliny the Younger’s Tuscan villa based on the latter’s writing (Letters, bk. 5, letter 6, to Lucius Domitius Apollinaris). Pliny the Younger (Gaius Plinius Cecilius Secundus, 61/62–112/113 CE) was a renowned Roman statesman and writer, and close to the Emperor Trajan. He owned several villas in Italy and wrote a letter on each of his two finest: a coastal villa near Rome called Laurentinum and an inland villa called Tuscos Meos (which translates as “my...

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