Imperial Roman Architecture in the history of architecture was not only the art of Greece which provided an example to be followed by the Romans. The military conquests of Alexander the Great demonstrated the possibilities of the expansion of a small state on an imperial scale. Like Alexander, the Romans had a trained and disciplined army, but unlike Alexander’s successors they had a highly developed sense of national purpose and public duty which helped to make their imperial venture long lasting.

During the first century BC the Romans over-ran all the countries around the Mediterranean. To the west and north-west, Spain, France, England and Wales were subdued. To the north and north-east, they took Switzerland and the territory south of the Danube; to the east, they subdued Greece, the Black Sea coast and the territory that comprises modern Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine, while to the south they occupied Egypt and the North African coast as far as Morocco.

It was the Roman policy to bring to the peoples of this great Empire the benefits of peace and organized administration. As a visible confirmation of this end, they endowed their provinces with spectacular architectural works. These works were of two kinds. Firstly the practical forms, which included military defence work, forts, walls and towers as well as docks and harbours, warehouses and markets, and bridges, aqueducts, dams and irrigation works. Although primarily feats of engineering, these often also embodied architecture of great beauty and grandeur. Secondary elements of the great Greek- inspired architectural assemblage that constituted the city of Rome were duplicated in any Roman city of importance. Theatre and amphitheatre, basilica, temple and bath-house were built on a lavish scale and often set in colonnaded public spaces. After the collapse of the Empire, many of these buildings survived over the centuries that followed. Even when their marble casings were stripped away for other works, the enduring quality of their concrete core has preserved hints of the size and scale of these great public works.

In the Italian countryside beyond Rome and throughout the Empire at large could be found the domestic expression of Roman architecture. This was the Roman country house or villa. Apart from those few miraculously preserved in the lava of Vesuvius, the others have to be largely imagined from their appearance in contemporary wall paintings and descriptions in Roman literature. The villas, although sometimes grandiose, were closely related to their natural setting. Roman life was lived close to nature. As the writings of Cicero and Pliny make clear, it is the view to the fields, the hours of sunlight a room enjoys, the closeness of a terrace to the breaking waves of the sea, or the way the villa extends into the garden that were such important elements in the domestic architecture of the time.