The History of Western Architecture: A Free Online Course Moving from Ancient Greece to Rococo

Image by Arild Vågen, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you have plans to vis­it the Old World any time soon, you should spend a few good min­utes — make that hours — with The His­to­ry of Archi­tec­ture, a free course that recent­ly debuted on YouTube. Taught by Jacque­line Gar­gus at Ohio State, the course fea­tures 39 video lec­tures that col­lec­tive­ly offer a clas­sic sur­vey of West­ern archi­tec­ture. We begin in Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, lay­ing the con­cep­tu­al foun­da­tions for what’s to come. Then we dive head­long into Islam­ic, Byzan­tine and Medieval archi­tec­ture, before spend­ing a good deal of time with Renais­sance, Baroque, and Roco­co styles. Of course, we encounter many great land­marks along the way: the pyra­mids of Egypt, the tem­ples of Ancient Greece, the Hagia Sophia in Con­stan­tino­ple, Chartres in France, Brunelleschi’s Duo­mo of Flo­rence, and the list goes on. The course appears on YouTube. Find the lec­tures below.

The His­to­ry of Archi­tec­ture has been added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. And if/when Prof. Gar­gus posts a sequel that gets us into mod­ern times, we’ll be sure to let you know.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enroll in Harvard’s Free Online Archi­tec­ture Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the His­to­ry & The­o­ry of Archi­tec­ture

Roman Archi­tec­ture: A Free Online Course from Yale

Take an Online Course on Design & Archi­tec­ture with Frank Gehry


by | Permalink | Comments (14) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (14)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.