Shotaro Nakano For generations, the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli has been credited as the birthplace of the British sans-serif. Both George Dance and John Soane visited the site, and Soane’s famous 1779 Design for a British Senate House has long been seen as the earliest surviving example of the style.
But what if the story began years earlier — and not at Tivoli at all?A wide-ranging examination of nearly 30,000 digitized architectural drawings — from the V&A Museum, the John Soane Museum, the RIBA, and other European collections — reveals earlier and more telling evidence.
In 1762, George Dance’s portrait of James “Athenian” Stuart features the sitter’s name in monoline, unmodulated capitals without serifs, created the very year Stuart’s The Antiquities of Athens brought Greek architecture to British readers.
In 1774, while still a student, Soane used comparable capitals to label rooms on a plan — five years before the Senate House design and before he ever saw Tivoli.These discoveries call into question the long-assumed link between Tivoli and Britain’s first sans-serifs.
The Temple’s inscription looks little like these early examples. Instead, the trail leads toward the study of direct Greek inscriptions and architecture in the late eighteenth century — shifting the origin story, and revealing how architectural practice helped shape the typefaces we know today.