The Stones of Venice examines Venetian architecture in detail, describing for example over eighty churches.

Ruskin discusses architecture of Venice's Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance periods, and provides a general history of the city.

[1] In the chapter "The Nature of Gothic" (from volume 2), Ruskin gives his views on how society should be organised.

As it is, we make both ungentle, the one envying, the other despising, his brother; and the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers and miserable workers.

His research methods included sketching and photography (by 1849 he had acquired his own camera so that he could take daguerreotypes).