The chapter addresses - from a semiotic perspective - two aspects of the phenomenon called ambiguously poetics of architecture. Accordingly, we can distinguish between: 1) the language of architecture, i.e. the manner in which architecture as a non-verbal artistic medium (and text) can be perceived on analogy to a verbal poetic text, and 2) the language about architecture, i.e. a depiction of architectural creations in the verbal medium. These two are realized by means of figuration and ekphrasis respectively. First, we consider a repertoire of metaphors that over the centuries have endeavoured to capture certain prominent architectural traits, with A BUILDING IS A HUMAN BODY and ARCHITECTURE IS A LANGUAGE/SCRIPT/BOOK being the most outstanding examples. In what concerns ekphrasis, the chapter mentions some interesting proposals of the taxonomy of pictorial ekphrasis in Polish literary criticism (Gogler 2004; Grodecka 2009; Olkusz in Grodecka 2009) as well as the proposal of such a taxonomy for architectural ekphrasis (Vieira 2021). The material analysed comes from the genre of travel writing and focuses on ekphrastic passages devoted to Buddhist sacral architecture in Tibet and Nepal drawn from 20th-century well-known travelogues (David-Neel 1927, 1929; Matthiessen 1978, 1996) and guidebooks, supported by two excerpts from art and historical discourse. The study shows that architectural tropology, mostly based on metaphor, applies also simile (often in combination with metaphor). The presence of other tropes in ekphrastic texts on architecture is a matter of future research. Our analysis demonstrates that we can observe an overlap or blend of various ekphrastic types (borrowed partly from pictorial ekphrasis) rather than a manifestation of strict categorization of architectural ekphrasis. By pointing to poetic and rhetorical potential present both in architectural works themselves and in their verbal descriptions, the chapter contributes to research on intermedial (including transmedial) effects across verbal and non-verbal artistic texts.