Through careful, and often conjectural reconstruction of Vitruvius's descriptions, Palladio established the standard for the way Renaissance architects saw and used the buildings of the ancient world.
All that Palladio learned from Vitruvius and from two later trips to Rome in the 1540s became the basis of the most influential books on architecture ever written, his Quattro Libri dell'Architettura, published in Venice in 1570.