Understanding Roman architecture: Roman Architecture and Urbanism: From the Origins to Late Antiquity. Pp. xvi + 897, illustrations, maps, color plates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 978-0-521-4707-1 .

Yegül, F., and D. Favro. 2019. Roman Architecture and Urbanism: From the Origins to Late Antiquity. Pp. xvi + 897, illustrations, maps, color plates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 978-0-521-4707-1.

In this masterful and comprehensive survey of Roman architecture and urbanism, Fikret Yegül and Diane Favro (Y. & F.) present us with their shared magnum opus – a major reference book for students and scholars for the decades to come. The authors offer a chronological assessment of the architecture and urbanism of Rome and Italy, with questions of technology and residential practices treated in distinct chapters, and a geographical examination of the regions in Rome's empire. This truly impressive book surpasses the existing surveys in English, A. Boëthius's Etruscan and Early Roman Architecture and J. Ward-Perkins's Roman Imperial Architecture, first published together as Etruscan and Roman Architecture, Frank Sear's Roman Architecture, and Roger Ulrich and Caroline Quenemoen's Companion to Roman Architecture, with its thorough treatment of the subject.¹ It will be complemented by William MacDonald's two volumes on The Architecture of the Roman Empire and Mark Wilson Jones's Principles of Roman Architecture, which tackle more comprehensively questions of architectural and urban design values and hierarchies.² With such an all-encompassing book, it is natural that some researchers might disagree on individual arguments and assessments. But the authors have taken good care to include the scholarly discourse on which they base their judgments, so the reader can consult the bibliography at the end of each chapter. The book is lavishly illustrated throughout with newly drawn plans and evocative reconstructions, often by Diane Favro, and exceptional and in some cases unique photos, often taken by Fikret Yegül. These illustrations greatly facilitate the book's use for teaching and research.

The introductory chapter deals with the question of Romanization and tackles the extent to which this discussion can be fruitful for understanding Roman architecture and urbanism. In addressing the shortcomings of the word and introducing the discourse around it, Y. & F. adopt a balanced view of Romanization as “a two-way street, in which the conqueror and the conquered influenced each other in a broad fluid (and often unequal) process” (3). Chapter 1 then moves on to stress the ways in which indigenous...