Arch arised as structural system more than two thousand years ago, but, in spite of this, it is still not widely diffused and is mainly adopted in presence of large spans. The structural efficiency of arches primarily depends on optimal material exploitation, i.e. minimization of internal stress eccentricity that reduces structural material volume and weight. An efficient structure, under these terms, leads to simple and light scaffolding, so contributing in minimizing construction costs. So, although literature on arches is already significant, there is still scope for design optimization. This study is framed within this context and deals with the structural analysis of end perfectly-constrained plane circular arches under uniformly distributed vertical load and self weight. In the first step, the analytical solution of arch static and kinematic behaviour is obtained by applying the force method. In the second step, the arch shape is optimized, by assuming the arch volume, and thus the weight, as objective function. Finally minima of the objective function (i.e. optimal geometric shape parameters) are computed and plotted in order to be used for practical purposes. Presented at OPTARCH2019, 1st International Conference on Optimization-Driven Architectural Design, Amman-Jordan, November 5-7 2019.