Rise of Neoclassical architecture

Neoclassical architecture was a revivalist style that arose in Europe from the middle of the eighteenth century and drew on the forms of ancient Greece and Rome. It was fueled by the excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii, by the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and by publications of Greek monuments, as well as by a taste for order and restraint after the exuberance of the Baroque and Rococo. Architects such as Robert Adam in Britain, Jacques-Germain Soufflot in France and later Karl Friedrich Schinkel in Germany used columns, pediments and symmetrical plans. The style spread to the United States, where it shaped buildings such as the Capitol and the Virginia State Capitol, and it remained popular for government buildings, museums and banks into the nineteenth century.

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