"Have you ever wondered why columns are just everywhere? Some are smooth, others have grooves; some have scrolls, others have a bunch of leaves on top. You’ll see columns, together with all the other bits and pieces with weird names like dado or dentil that we call Classical architecture on all sorts of buildings all over the world. They’re on ruined temples, suburban McMansions, Renaissance palazzos and those ‘I’m very important’ buildings like libraries and town halls. We're going to take you on a world-wide romp through history to tell the story of how our obsession with Classical architecture started, who kept it alive over the centuries, why we use it to communicate identity, wealth and power and why we still love it so much today (spoiler alert – it involves dead virgins and baskets).

Flavia Marcello is an Associate Professor of Architectural History which sounds kinda dry and boring but is actually loads of fun because she gets paid to look at old buildings, write about them and even (sometimes) point at them. She lived in Rome for eight years so is an expert on the history of one of the world’s oldest and most famous cities. She is an expert on the Italian Fascist period and how they used Classical architecture to communicate power. She also teaches architecture students about the architecture of the past so that they will (hopefully) design better buildings in the future..."