The course offers an “interpretation” of past architectural works, providing tools to analyze them, understand their historical context, and evaluate their qualities. To this end, the selected architectural works will be examined, encouraging students to ask why they were built at a specific time and place, what the objectives of the client, the builder, and the architect were, how and why certain techniques and specific materials were chosen, what relationships these works have with the architecture of the past and with that of their own time, and finally, how these overall aspects relate to one another by reconstructing the design process, when it is sufficiently documented. In the first year, the buildings considered most significant are examined, spanning the period from the Classical Age to the 16th century.