United Kingdom Architecture

In many ancient civilizations, such as the Egyptians' and Mesopotamians', architecture and urbanism reflected the constant engagement with the divine and the supernatural, and many ancient cultures resorted to monumentality in architecture to represent symbolically the political power of the ruler, the ruling elite, or the state itself.
The architecture and urbanism of the Classical civilizations such as the Greek and the Roman evolved from civic ideals rather than religious or empirical ones and new building types emerged. Architectural styles developed.
Texts on architecture have been written since ancient time. These texts provided both general advice and specific formal prescriptions or canons. Some examples of canons are found in the writings of the 1st-century BCE Roman military engineer Vitruvius, the Kao Gong Ji of ancient China and Vaastu Shastra of ancient India and Manjusri Vasthu Vidya Sastra of Sri Lanka. Some of the most important early examples of canonic architecture are religious.