The book tackles the five orders, Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and composite in separate sections, each subdivided in five parts on the colonnade, arcade, arcade with pedestal, individual pedestals, and entablatures and capitals.

Vignola was an Italian Renaissance architect, assisting Michelangelo during his work on the St. Peter's Basilica.

Following the examples of the Classical Roman work of Vitruvius and the five books of the Regole generali d'architettura by Sebastiano Serlio published from 1537, Vignola started writing an architecture rule book on the classical orders.

[3] For centuries it has been reprinted, translated, and used as an inspiration, e.g. for William Robert Ware's main work The American Vignola of 1904.

By 1700, it had been reprinted fifteen times in Italian, and translated into Dutch, English, French, German, Russian and Spanish.