Andrea Palladio · The First Book
Chapter XXVII. Of Chimneys
THE antients used to warm their rooms in this manner. They made their chimneys in the middle, with columns or modiglions that supported the architraves, upon which was the pyramid of the chimney, from whence the smoke issued. There was one of these to be seen at Base near Nero's piscina, and another not far from Civita Vecchia.
A wp when they were not willing to have chimneys, they then made in the thickness of the walls some tubes or pipes, through which they conveyed the heat of the fire that was under those rooms, and which came out of certain vents or holes that were made at the top of those pipes.
Almost in the same manner the TRENTI, Vicentine gentlemen at Cossoza, their villa cooled the rooms in the summer, because there are in the mountains of the laid villa some very large caves, which the inhabitants of those places call Coal, that formerly were quarries, (which I believe Vitruvius means, when in the second book, wherein he treats of stones, he says, that in the Marca Trivigiana a sort of stone was dug up, which was cut with a saw like wood) in which some very cool winds were generated, and which those gentlemen conveyed to their houses through certain subterraneous vaults, by them called ventidudts, and with pipes like the abovesaid, they convey that cool wind through all the rooms, by stopping and unstopping them at pleasure, to receive more or less of that cool air according to the seasons.
Ap altho’ this very great convenience makes this place wonderful, what makes it fill more worthy our admiration, is the prison of the winds, which is a subterraneous room built by the most excellent Signor Francesco TRENTO, and by him called Eolia, where a great number of those ventiducts discharge themselves; to beautify which, and make it worthy of the name, he has neither spared cost or care.
But to return to the chimneys; we make them in the thickness of the walls, and raise their funnels above the roofs, that they may carry the smoke into the air: observing not to make their funnels too wide, nor too narrow; because if they are made wide, the air wandering through them, will drive the smoke down, and hinder its ascending and going out freely; when too narrow, the smoke not having a free passage, will choak it up, and return.
THEREFORE in the chimneys of rooms the funnels are not to be made less wide than half a foot, nor wider than nine inches, and two foot and a half long; and the mouth of the pyramid, where it joins to the funnel, must be made a little narrower, that the smoke returning down, may meet with that impediment to hinder its coming into the room.
Some make the funnel crooked, in order that by this crookedness, and the force of the fire, which drives the smoke up, they may prevent the smoke from returning back,
The top of the chimneys, or the holes thro’ which the smoke is to co cut, ought to be wide, and far from any combustible matter, The mantle-trees upon which the piramia of the chimneys are made, ought to be very neatly wrought, and in every thing far from being rustick; because rustick work is not proper, unless it be in very great edifices, for the reasons already mentioned.
Public-domain text (London, published by Isaac Ware, 1738). Read from the Internet Archive’s scan (gri_33125011569684) of the copy in the Getty Research Institute, by way of Wikimedia Commons, where it is marked public domain. That scan’s text layer had lost the ends of the lines on every left-hand page, so the pages were read again from the scan’s images, the two readings compared word by word, and the text cleaned: the long s (ſ) is printed s and the ct and st ligatures as plain letters, words broken at the ends of lines are joined, and running heads, page numbers, signatures and catchwords are removed. Ware’s spelling, capitals and punctuation are otherwise kept (shew, publick, antient, compleat). Chapter titles and words the OCR misread were corrected against the page images. Some misreadings will remain, most of them in the italic prefaces and the Latin of Book III. Ware’s dedication, the list of subscribers, his table of terms, the errata and the bookseller’s advertisement are not reproduced. Nor are the 212 engraved plates, their inscriptions, or the keys to the letters on them that Ware prints in the text: where Palladio writes “as in the design” the figure is in the printed book.