 The term "Gothic architecture" originated as a pejorative description.Giorgio Vasari used the term "barbarous German style" in his "Lives of the Artists" to describe what is now considered the Gothic style, and in the introduction to the "Lives" he attributes various architectural features to the Goths, whom he held responsible for destroying the ancient buildings after they conquered Rome, and erecting new ones in this style.When Vasari wrote, Italy had experienced a century of building in the Vitruvian architectural vocabulary of classical orders revived in the Renaissance and seen as evidence of a new Golden Age of learning and refinement.