The Architecture of the Eighteenth Century (World of Art)

The architecture produced between 1700 and 1800 represents a classic perfection which no later age has equalled. The first half of the eighteenth century was pervaded by the spirit of Baroque, epitomized most completely in palaces and churches: Schonbrunn in Vienna, the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg or the dazzlingly theatrical churches and Residenzes of Germany and Central Europe. After 1750 architecture turned away from Baroque towards Neo-classicism, whose most characteristic types included private houses, institutional buildings and planned towns--Bath, Philadelphia and Washington, with their theatres, museums, hospitals and banks.