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Daniel Specklin from Strasbourg, originally a trained silk embroiderer, worked as a cartographer and fortress builder in many towns of Europe before he settled as municipal master builder in his home town. Amongst other places, he also worked in Vienna, where he renewed the fortifications of the mediaeval city around the middle of the 16th century following the model of Italian fortresses. With his “Architectura”, Specklin wrote an important standard work for fortress building that covered all relevant topics from the surveying of the site to the furnishing with cannons, and was reproduced many times in the course of almost 200 years.