Colosseum (Partial Elevation) Rome — completed 80 CE The defining monument of imperial Rome and the largest amphitheatre ever built. Commissioned by Vespasian and inaugurated by Titus, its travertine façade stacks Tuscan, Ionic, and Corinthian orders in a hierarchy that became canonical for Renaissance theorists from Alberti onward. The partial elevation isolates this superposition — the structural logic of arch-within-frame that Roman builders perfected here and that European architecture would quote, adapt, and contest for nearly two millennia. Architect unknown.