The history of architecture is not just a matter of dates, architects and styles, but also the way buildings are experienced and the ideas that lie behind them. And architecture itself is both a utilitarian activity - people have to live, work and worship in buildings - and a visual art, as expressive and exciting as painting and sculpture. This book traces the way in which, over two and a half millennia, these two processes have (usually happily) co-existed. In a new, refreshingly readable telling of an old story the author shows how social and technological changes have conditioned the way buildings were conceived, from Greece and Rome through the Early Christian, Romanesque and Gothic centuries to the Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical periods, leading to the astonishing flowering of opportunities and skills in the 19th and 20th centuries. Illustrated throughout with photographs closely linked to the text, this is a guide for the student and general reader to follow into the 21st century.