De re aedificatoria (in Spanish: The art of building) is a treatise in ten books about architecture written in Latin by the Genoese humanist Leon Battista Alberti around the year 1450, during his stay in Rome. It is considered the most significant architectural treatise of humanist culture.

It was written on the model of the ten books of Marcus Vitruvius's treatise De architectura, which at that time circulated in manuscript copies. This work was both a rereading and a criticism of the Vitruvian text, as an attempt to create the first modern treatise on the theory of architecture; and it is not only dedicated to a specialist audience, but also to a cultured public of humanist instruction.

It was dedicated to Pope Nicholas V in its edition of 1452. The book was printed for the first time in Latin in Florence, with the title Leonis Baptiste Alberti De re aedificatoria, thirteen years after the death of its author. This was edited by Nicolai Laurentii Alamani and was finished printing on December 29, 1485. This work contains a preface by Angelo Poliziano, who dedicated the work to Lorenzo de' Medici. On August 23, 1512, a Latin copy edited by Geoffroy Tory and published in Paris by Bertholdi Rembolt and Ludovici Hornken was completed.[1]

André de Resende translated this treaty into Portuguese between the years 1543 and 1552 at the request of King John III of Portugal.

They are preserved from him; a copy from 1550, edited in Florence by Cosimo Bartoli.[2]​.

The first edition in Spanish of De re aedificatoria is the one made by Francisco Lozano in Madrid, published without illustrations in 1582 under the name The ten books of architecture of León Baptista Alberto.[note 1]​[3]​ This edition was censored in the Index of Prohibited Books of the Spanish Inquisition written by Gaspar de Quiroga y Vela in 1583. A second edition in Spanish was published in Madrid in 1797 in three volumes, although this was a crude copy of Lozano's edition. In 1784 an edition written by Diego Antonio Rejón de Silva was published. There is also an anonymous manuscript from the Monastery of San Benito el Real in Valladolid; which is preserved in the National Historical Archive, under the name De Alquitatura.

This treatise was translated into English by the architect Giacomo Leoni and printed in London in 1726 by Thomas Edlin"); whose edition was illustrated and bilingual in three volumes with text in Italian on the left and text in English on the right. This book also contains the texts of De pictura and .