quarrée

Updated: May 18, 2025

However, it is effected on a plan, which, with a great deal of beauty and convenience within, unites an external form on the most perfect model of antiquity now existing. This is the Maison Quarrée of Nismes, built by Caius and Lucius Cæsar, and repaired by Louis XIV., which, in the opinion of all who have seen it, yields, in beauty, to no piece of architecture on earth.

Thomas Jefferson - Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 1

Thinking it a favorable opportunity of introducing into the state an example of architecture, in the classic style of antiquity, and the Maison Quarrée of Nismes, an ancient Roman temple, being considered as the most perfect model existing of what may be called Cubic architecture, I applied to M. Clerissault, who had published drawings of the antiquities of Nismes, to have me a model of the building made in stucco, only changing the order from Corinthian to Ionic, on account of the difficulty of the Corinthian capitals.

Thomas Jefferson - Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 1