"Capitol of Virginia Richmond"

Devised by Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) with the French architect Charles-Louis Clérisseau (1720–1820), the design for Virginia’s Capitol building was modeled after the Maison Carrée, an ancient Roman temple in Nîmes, France. The original structure was completed in 1788. It was the first public building in America designed in the Monumental Classical style and it embodied the Greek and Roman ideals to which the founding fathers turned as they framed the political structure of the new American republic.