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ARCHITECTURE

Gordon McLachlan
with contributions by Lucy Ratcliffe
The Greeks and Etruscans
The earliest important structures still standing in Italy were built by the peninsula's Greek colonizers of the sixth century BC. These exhibit the same qualities characteristic of the classical architecture of Greece itself: a strong but simple outline, a rigorous adherence to balanced proportions, a total unity of design featuring a logical system of horizontals and verticals, and extensive use of decoration to emphasize the structure. This architecture, which principally made use of marble, was based on three great classical orders , each of which consisted of an upright column, sometimes resting on a base, topped by a capital and an entablature of architrave, cornice and frieze.
Doric, the grandest and plainest of these orders, was used for the temples which are the chief glory of the Greek style, dedicated to gods yet always human in scale, never rising very high, nor appearing in any way overblown. A fine group can be seen on the Italian mainland at Paestum ; the others - at Agrigento, Selinunte, Segesta and Siracusa - are in Sicily . They are older and less refined than the Parthenon in Athens, but their state of preservation compares favourably with any of their counterparts in Greece. Significantly, the Temple of Concord in Agrigento, the most complete of all, was saved by being transformed into a Christian church, while the Temple of Athena in Syracuse was incorporated into the duomo, where it still remains.
The Greeks were also inveterate builders of open-air theatres - generally set against hillsides, with seats for the spectators hollowed out of the rock. Siracusa's Greek theatre is one of the best preserved of its period; that of Taormina, with the peerless backdrop of Mount Etna, also dates back to the Greeks, but was extensively remodelled by the Romans.
A very different form of architecture was practised during the same period in central Italy by the Etruscans , but unfortunately little Etruscan architecture remains above ground, as their Roman conquerors engaged in a deliberate programme of obliteration. The few surviving examples include the city walls of Volterra and Cortona, from the sixth century BC, and the gateways at Volterra and Perugia, from about three centuries later. However, Etruscan tombs survive in abundance, mainly at Cerveteri and Tarquinia in northern Lazio.


The Roman period
In architecture, as in many other fields, the Romans borrowed from and adapted Greek models. Just as was the case with other art forms, however, their approach to building shows marked differences, particularly in their preference for order and usefulness above beauty. Functional building materials were favoured, and only from the time of Augustus, which marked the softening of the Roman image, are marble and stucco much in evidence, and then usually for facing purposes only. Furthermore, towns were laid out wherever possible in a regular planned grid format, to the model of a military camp.
Although they used the three Greek orders (preferring the Corinthian, with its elaborate acanthus leaf capital), and invented two more of their own, the Romans relegated the column from the essential structural role it had performed under the Greeks to one that was merely decorative. Instead, they concentrated on solid constructions, employing the rounded forms of the arch and dome, and focusing attention on the end walls. Vaulting was the Romans' major contribution to architectural development. Their use of an early type of concrete rather than timber frames enabled them to span much larger spaces and build much higher than the Greeks had ever done; indeed, their achievements were unequalled until the nineteenth century. Accordingly, they were able to create an architecture which perfectly expressed their own preoccupations of power and glory.
Roman architecture once dominated Europe, showing no appreciable regional variations, and many of the most impressive individual monuments still standing lie outside Italy. However, the most important ensembles are to be found in Rome itself, its original seaport of Ostia , and the residential towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum (which were both submerged by the massive eruption of Mount Vesuvius). The heart of a Roman city was its forum , a square usually set at the intersection of the two main streets. Its buildings were the focus of all the main aspects of public life: worship, politics, law, finance, trading, shopping and meeting. In time, it often became too small for all these functions: the Roman Forum itself, which largely dates from the days of the Republic, is an extreme case in point, and successive emperors found it necessary to lay out separate new forums in the city.
Each forum usually contained several temples , of which notable examples survive in Palestrina, Tivoli, Assisi and Brescia. At first, these tended to follow the Greek model, with the front entrance given due prominence, and often preceded by a flight of steps. Later, circular designs were increasingly favoured, as with the Temples of Vesta in Rome. A circular design was also chosen for the Pantheon in Rome, which is not only the greatest temple of all, and the only complete building to have survived from the days of imperial Rome, but is also one of the all-time masterpieces of both engineering and architecture, its dome still one of the largest in the world.
The main public building in Roman towns was the basilica , which was used for meetings and administration. In many respects, it was rather like a Greek temple turned inside out, consisting of a large hall terminating in an apse, with aisles to the side, often bearing galleries and with a sloping vault which was lower than that of the main section. No complete examples survive in Italy, but some idea of the development of this type of building can be had by comparing the fragments of the basilicas of Trajan and Maxentius in Rome, which are nearly two centuries apart in date. The former was colonnaded, and had a flat wooden roof, while the latter (as can clearly be seen in the surviving aisle) had a sturdy concrete vault borne by five massive piers.
In the field of leisure, the thermae played a key role. These vast edifices had hot, warm and cold baths, as well as halls for all kinds of other activities - those of the Emperors Caracalla and Diocletian, both in Rome, from the third and fourth centuries AD, provide the most potent reminder of their splendour. Roman theatres differed from those of the Greeks in being constructed above ground, and in having a semicircular orchestra . The Teatro di Marcello, completed under Augustus, is the only survivor in Rome itself; it is also notable for marking the use of superimposed orders in architecture for the first time. However, the Romans as a rule much preferred the atmosphere of their amphitheatres , which were used to stage gladiatorial contests and other public spectaculars. These were elliptical in shape, and of very solid construction, using a variety of materials. The outer wall, pierced by rows of arches, had a massive effect; inside, the seats were grouped in tiers. Rome's so-called Colosseum is the best preserved; others are to be found in Verona, Cápua, Pozzuoli and Pompeii.
Roman houses fall into three main categories. The domus or town dwelling was grouped symmetrically around an atrium and one or more peristyle courts. A more rambling plan characterizes the villa , a patrician country residence which tended to be decorated with porticoes and colonnades, and have rooms specially aligned to catch both the sun and the shade. Poorer Romans lived in insulae , tenement-type constructions with several floors, which were often vaulted throughout and grouped symmetrically in streets and squares. Few Roman palaces remain. The most important is the misleadingly named Villa Adriana in Tivoli, replete with fantastical re-creations of buildings the Emperor Hadrian had seen on his travels, along with grottoes, terraces and fountains. From a century earlier, Nero's fabled Domus Aurea in Rome survives only in part.
Roman law forbade burial inside the city walls, and the Via Appia became the favoured site, lined by cylindrical, tower-like mausoleums , the finest being that of Cecilia Metella. A similar but larger structure, of the Emperor Augustus, was the first to be built in the city centre. Another in honour of Hadrian was by far the most spectacular funerary monument built by the Romans, but was later converted into the Castel Sant'Angelo.
The triumphal arch was a specifically Roman creation, usually erected to celebrate military victories and richly adorned with bas-reliefs, the whole surmounted by a large sculptural group, usually of a horse-drawn triumphal chariot. Several of these arches can be seen in Rome; others are in Ancona, Aosta, Benevento, Rimini and Susa.
Another Roman invention was the aqueduct , which was built to transport water to the towns. These were undecorated and purely functional, with the water running down a very gentle gradient along a channel at the top. Nonetheless, they often have a majestic sweep, particularly when the lie of the land dictated the building of several tiers. Traces of aqueducts can be seen south of Rome, though the most impressive surviving examples are in other countries. The Romans also excelled at building bridges . There were eleven spanning the Tiber in the capital in imperial times; these have mostly been replaced or altered, but the Pons Fabricius remains substantially intact. Other bridges which have changed little are the graceful Ponte di Solesta in Ascoli Piceno, which is of a single arch only, and the five-arched Ponte di Tiberio in Rimini.


Early Christian and Byzanthine
The early Christians in Italy initially had to practise their religion in private houses and underground in catacombs hollowed out of the rock. Those in Rome are the most famous, but other impressive groups can be seen in Naples and Siracusa. When Christianity was legalized and officially adopted by the Roman Empire, it was hardly surprising that its architecture should base itself very directly on secular imperial models. In particular, churches adopted a basilican format. They were generally raised over the graves of martyrs, whose tombs were kept in the crypt, directly below the high altar. In time, they would invariably be orientated towards the east, though in the early churches it was quite normal to face exactly the opposite way. For the interior, columns were often taken from demolished secular buildings.
In Rome itself, much the best-preserved church of this time is Santa Sabina, which dates from the fifth century. Its exterior is of a stark simplicity, the plain brick walls pierced only by large windows; the interior shows the move towards regular columns. The larger contemporary basilicas of Santa Maria Maggiore and San Paolo fuori le Mura, though both much altered down the centuries, still clearly show the variations in the basilican plan. Transepts were introduced, as a result of a conscious desire to simulate the shape of the Cross; double aisles were also employed, except at Santa Maria Maggiore. Also of this period is San Giovanni in Laterano, which pioneers the Italian preference for a separate, octagonal baptistry .
The basic basilican style flourished in the city for centuries, and little in the way of development is discernible between the seventh-century Sant'Agnese and the ninth-century Santa Maria in Cosmedin, or even the twelfth-century San Clemente, though the last is unusually archaic.
The next significant buildings are those of the subsequent imperial capital, Ravenna . These are understandably more famous for the resplendent mosaics which adorn their interiors, but they are also of major architectural significance, marking the appearance in Italy of the Byzantine style, whose most distinctive characteristic was the development of the dome. Under the Romans, this by necessity had to rest on a circular base; by the use of pendentives, the Byzantines were able to erect a dome on square foundations. The earliest of the surviving Ravenna monuments, the Mausoleum of Galla Placida, dating from about 430, provides a good illustration of this. The church of San Vitale, an ingenious design of an octagon within an octagon, is also remarkable. The other churches here are basilican in form; a curiosity is that the apse is semicircular inside, but has a polygonal exterior. Their cylindrical campaniles were added later, probably in the ninth century. These are the earliest freestanding belltowers - from then on, a popular characteristic of Italian churches - to have survived, though the form was actually pioneered in Rome.
Italy's most purely Byzantine buildings are to be found in the Venetian lagoon, whose prosperity was dependent on its eastern trade. The duomo of Torcello , originally seventh-century but extensively remodelled in the early eleventh century, is the oldest of these; Santa Fosca on the same island is in the same style. However, the Byzantine heritage is seen to best effect in the basilica of San Marco in Venice itself. This was also much altered in the eleventh century, but the basic layout of the original ninth-century building, modelled on the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, was preserved. With its five bulbous domes, its Greek-cross plan and sumptuous mosaic decoration, it stands as the supreme Byzantine monument of its time.


Romanesque
The European emergence from the Dark Ages in the tenth and eleventh centuries is associated in architecture with the Romanesque style, which in Italy draws heavily on the country's own heritage. Features not commonly found in other countries include a continued attachment to the basilical plan, and to cupolas raised on domes, the use of marble for facing, the presence of separate baptistries and campaniles, and the employment of the arch for decorative rather than purely structural reasons.
Strong regional variations are apparent. The churches of the Lombard plain most resemble those of northern Europe, and were among the most internationally influential. Their most dominant features are their tall, stately towers, which are unbuttressed and adorned with pilaster strips. They usually have a projecting vaulted porch on the facade, resting on a base of lions, above which a wheel window serves as the principal source of light for the nave. Decoration is otherwise concentrated in the apse, which often has an open dwarf gallery and corbels delicately carved with grotesque heads. Rib vaulting - revolutionary in its day - was sometimes used inside. The duomo in Modena is particularly outstanding, as are the characteristic trios of duomo, campanile and baptistry at Parma and Cremona .
All these are surpassed by the highly distinctive style of Pisa , which can be seen all over the city but is particularly associated with the Piazza del Duomo, which adds a burial ground (the Camposanto) to the normal group of three, and has the rare advantage of a spacious verdant setting away from the commercial centre. Although the ensemble was begun in the mid-eleventh century and only finished three hundred years later, it shows a remarkable sense of unity. The buildings all have marble facing, and their exteriors, in a design conducive to catching wonderful light effects, have open arcaded galleries, which rise all the way to the facade gable - and all the way round the building. A broadly similar approach was adopted in the neighbouring cities of Lucca and Pistoia .
An even more idiosyncratic Romanesque style was fostered in the earliest surviving buildings of Florence - the baptistry, San Miniato and Santi Apostoli, plus the Badia in Fiesole. The overall layout of these buildings is typical enough of the time, but the continued use of mosaics and marble panelling in the interiors is suggestive of the Byzantine era, while the overall elegance of form shows a debt to Roman models.
In southern Italy there was a marriage of Byzantine and Romanesque styles, as can be seen at San Nicola in Bari and the duomos of Salerno, Amalfi, Troia, Trani, Molfetta and Bitonto. An even more intoxicating mix is found in Sicily , where the island's traditions were freely welded into an exotic confection which is wholly unique. Sturdy Norman towers are often found in concert with Byzantine domes and mosaics and Saracenic horseshoe arches and stalactite vaulting. The duomo of Monreale - and in particular its fabulous cloister with dazzling mosaics and richly carved capitals - is particularly outstanding. Those of Cefalù and Palermo are also notable, as are three surprising parish churches, all in the capital - La Martorana, San Cataldo and San Giovanni degli Eremiti. Palermo also has two outstanding palaces which show the same mix of styles: the Palazzo dei Normanni and La Zisa.



The Gothic period
The Gothic style, which placed great emphasis on light and verticality, and was associated with the pointed arch, rib vault, flying buttress and large traceried windows, progressed from its mid-twelfth-century French origins to become the dominant architectural force of medieval Europe. But although it was used in Italy from the early thirteenth century to the early fifteenth century, its lifespan here was far shorter than elsewhere, and the forms it took quite different from those of other countries. In many ways, Italy was wholly unsuited to the Gothic, which remained essentially a northern European creation. The pointed arch was foreign to a country steeped in classicism, while the hot climate meant that only small windows were required, or interiors would become stifling. For the same reason, the giant portals of northern Gothic were unwanted; moreover, the large numbers of statues in the round they required were anathema to a nation reared on relief carvings.
In Italian Gothic architecture the emphasis is still on the horizontal : buildings seldom rise very high, and often have wooden roofs rather than stone vaults. Colour plays a far more important role than in any other country, as do walls covered with marble facing, mosaics and frescoes. A great deal of attention was lavished on facades , but these were again often purely decorative, with no architectural relationship to the structure behind. Many of the most characteristic features of Gothic, such as soaring steeples and graceful pinnacles, flying buttresses and elaborate vaults, are hardly to be found in Italy at all.
As elsewhere in Europe, the spread of the plain early-Gothic style in Italy is associated with the reforming Cistercian order of monks. The abbey of Fossanova , which was complete by the first decade of the thirteenth century, is an outstanding example of their architecture, as well as an unusually complete example of a medieval monastic complex. In a similar manner are the monasteries of San Galgano near Siena (now in ruins) and the collegiate church of Sant'Andrea in Vercelli. However, the most outstanding early-Gothic church in Italy is the basilica of San Francesco in Assisi , which was built in the wake of the saint's death in 1226. It is a wholly original, symbolical design, with the lower church dark and mysterious, the upper light and airy, each provided with ample wall space which in time was duly filled with appropriate fresco cycles.
Nothing quite like San Francesco was ever built again, but the churches of the Franciscan and Dominican orders became a dominant feature of many cities. In accordance with the emphasis placed on preaching, these were typically barn-like structures, intended to hold a large congregation. They were invariably of brick, but differed considerably in plan. The most imposing are the late-thirteenth-century Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella in Florence , and their fourteenth-century counterparts in Venice - I Frari and San Zanipolo.
Though there were relatively few important building projects of the Gothic period, they generally took on a spectacular nature. The duomo in Siena is arguably the most sumptuous Gothic cathedral ever built, and boasts a resplendent facade in which sculptures were used in a wholly unorthodox and challenging way. Florence 's duomo has gained world fame through its Renaissance dome, but in essentials it is a highly inventive Gothic design, whose final shape had already been determined by the mid-fourteenth century. Its detached campanile, unbuttressed and faced with coloured marbles and reliefs, illustrates the continuing Italian preference for this form. Orvieto shows the tendencies of Italian Gothic at its most extreme: the interior architecture is plain, and remarkably close in spirit to an early Christian basilica, whereas the facade surpasses even Siena's for ornateness, with its narrative bas-reliefs, brightly coloured marbles and mosaics. Only the duomo of Milan , begun in the late fourteenth century but not finally completed until the nineteenth century, uses much of the stock vocabulary of northern European cathedral architecture, no doubt owing to the fact that German masons were partly responsible for its construction. Yet even here the gleaming white marble and pronounced geometric nature of the design are wholly Italianate.
The scale of this project seems to have inspired that of the nearby Certosa di Pavia, near Pavia , the most extensive monastic complex in the country. Here, however, notice was paid to changing artistic tastes, with the result that it progressively moved away from its Gothic origins. San Petronio in Bologna , which was started around the same time, was a parish church intended to rival any cathedral, and to surpass them all in length. Work, however, was abandoned on the belated completion of the nave. From a century earlier, another idiosyncratic design worthy of mention is the pilgrimage church of il Santo in Padua . This has an essentially Gothic plan, even including a French-style chevet with radiating chapels. However, the facade is derived from the Lombard Romanesque, while the seven large domes are evidence of the continued attraction of Byzantinism.
In the field of military architecture, the most imposing thirteenth-century castles were built in southern Italy by Emperor Frederick II, most impressive of which is the celebrated Castel del Monte , which combined classical and Gothic elements in a plan of monotonous regularity, with an octagonal shape used for towers, perimeter walls and courtyard. Frederick's castle at Lucera was transformed later in the century by the Angevins, who also built the Castel Nuovo in Naples - later altered to serve as a palace in succeeding centuries.
Among fourteenth-century constructions, the Fortezza at Volterra is an archetypal medieval castle set high on a hill, with cylindrical keep, round towers, massive outer walls and machicolations. Of the palatial fortresses begun around this time, those of Mantua , Ferrara and Verona are particularly outstanding, the last guarded by a strongly fortified bridge over the Adige. Italy's other famous Gothic bridge, the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, presents a total contrast, with jewellers' shops along its length.
In the late thirteenth century, the rise of civic pride led to a passion for building majestic town halls , often crowned by a slender tower. The most imposing are the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena and the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. These same cities, along with many more in central Italy, are rich in Gothic mansions of the patrician class. However, the most distinctive residences in the country were built in Venice . The Ca' d'Oro is the most refined, whereas the Ca' Fóscari and Palazzo Giustinian have a compensating monumental grandeur. All were modelled on the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, arguably the greatest secular European building of its time, which ingeniously combines Gothic and Islamic styles on its exterior walls, with evidence of the classical influence in its courtyards and interiors.


The early Renaissance
The Gothic style maintained a firm hold over northern European architecture until well into the sixteenth century. In Florence , however, it had been supplanted by the second decade of the fifteenth century by the new, classically derived Renaissance style, which soon spread throughout Italy. Its conquest of the rest of Europe, if belated, was absolute, establishing an architectural vocabulary which remained unchallenged until the nineteenth century, and still maintains a footing even today. From here on, the history of architecture becomes a history of architects. Previously, major buildings had been designed and built by lodges under masons whose fame was seldom wide or long lasting. To some extent this had been modified in Italy by the appointment of famous painters and sculptors for the most prestigious commissions. This trend continued in the Renaissance period and was undoubtedly a factor in ensuring that all major buildings were aesthetically pleasing - a casual relationship which was lost in later centuries as architecture shed its dilettante connotations and became professional in outlook, with full-time practitioners emerging for the first time.
Both the format of modern architecture and the profession of architect were in many respects the single-handed creation of Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446). Having been unsuccessful in the competition for the Florence Baptistry doors, he turned away from his original training as a sculptor, devoting himself to a careful study of the building practices and techniques of the ancients. He subsequently won another major local competition, that for the duomo's dome. It was only by reviving Roman methods of herringbone brickwork, and by inventing suitable hoisting machinery, that Brunelleschi was able to give the final shape to this otherwise Gothic construction, which ever since has served as the focal point of the city, and provided a model for all subsequent domes. In his key original buildings - the Ospedale degli Innocenti, the churches of San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito and the Cappella Pazzi - Brunelleschi seems to have been inspired as much by the distinctive Romanesque legacy of his native city as by ancient Rome. His designs are majestic but uncomplicated; they are entirely original, and in no sense an archeological revival of any previous style.
Two more Brunelleschi innovations - a new type of urban palace, and a central plan for church design - are best illustrated in buildings by Michelozzo di Bartolommeo (1396-1472). The Palazzo Medici-Riccardi established the form of Florentine mansions for the rest of the century - a severe facade of three bands: rusticated stonework in the basement, smoother stones in the middle and smooth ashlar upstairs, an overhanging cornice, and a compensatingly light inner courtyard. In the church of Santa Annunziata, Michelozzo modelled the tribune on a circular Roman temple in the first centrally planned church design to be built in the Renaissance period; with Santa Maria delle Grazie in Pistoia he extended this concept to the entire building. His light and airy library in San Marco is a mould-breaker in its own right; its format of a central nave flanked by aisles was used throughout the Renaissance.
Even more influential was Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72). One of the most complete personifications of Renaissance Man, Alberti was above all a writer and theorist, the author of the first architectural treatise since Roman times; he designed buildings, but always relied on other architects to build them. Far more archeological in taste than Brunelleschi, he set out to give new life to such Roman forms as triumphal arches and pedimented temple fronts. He also articulated the theory of harmonic proportions, which, in emulation of musical intervals, adopted certain ratios of measurement - first put into practice in the facade of Santa Maria Novella. With the Palazzo Rucellai, he solved the problem of how to make the facades of Florentine palaces seem less austere and Gothic in feel by the simple expedient of introducing thin pilaster strips. Alberti's most original creations, however, are outside Florence. Although unfinished, his design for the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini is a magnificent fragment, cloaking the old Franciscan church with a covering inspired by the same town's great Roman monuments. An even more resplendent facade was designed for Sant'Andrea in Mantua . Its elements are carefully repeated in the interior, a vast space which daringly omits aisles in favour of a single nave with side chapels.
Bernardo Rossellino (1409-64), who was the builder of the Palazzo Rucellai, used its basic form again in the Palazzo Piccolomini in Pienza , where he was also responsible for the duomo and the surrounding buildings. This was part of the most ambitious planning scheme of the day, the laying out of a complete new papal town. Like many subsequent Renaissance projects, it remains incomplete, available funds failing to match the grandeur of inspiration. The creation of ideal towns was the main preoccupation of Antonio Averlino known as Filarete (c1400-69), the second main architectural theorist of the day. He himself built very little, other than part of the Castello Sforzesco and the huge, symmetrical Ospedale Maggiore, both in Milan .
Of the next generation of Florentine architects, Giuliano da Maiano (1432-90) introduced the Renaissance style to Siena with the Palazzo Spannochi, and also built the duomo in Faenza . The last phase of his career was spent in Naples , where he was responsible for the Porta Capuana and chapels in the church of Monteoliveto. Giuliano da Sangallo (1445-1516) was the first to apply Renaissance principles to the layout of villas, and his work in Florence includes the Palazzo Strozzi, the most ambitious palace of the century, and the heavily antique cloister of Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi, in which Ionic columns boldly take the place of arches.
The most complete and refined early-Renaissance palace was built in the comparative obscurity of Urbino , where a cultivated humanist court flourished. Luciano Laurana (c1420-79), an obscure architect of Dalmatian origin, is credited with the overall plan, as well as the building of the elegant courtyard, and the ornate chimneypieces and doorways which are key features of the interior. Also attached to Urbino was the Sienese Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439-1501/2), who is thought to have built the exquisite loggia overlooking the hills, as well as two domed churches: San Bernardino in Urbino itself and Santa Maria del Calcinaio in Cortona. Like many other Renaissance architects, he worked extensively on military projects, specializing in hilltop castles with pioneering defences against artillery. Ferrara was another small court where the Renaissance prospered, thanks in large part to an ambitious extension to the town designed by Biagio Rossetti (1447-1516), which included numerous churches and palaces, the most original of which is the Palazzo dei Diamanti, named after the diamond shapes used on its facade. Venice remained attached to the Gothic style until the 1460s. When the Renaissance finally took root, it was given a pronounced local accent, with hangovers from Byzantinism in the preference for rich surfaces and mystical spatial effects. Architects still enjoyed nothing like the prestige they had gained in Florence, and it was only as a result of nineteenth-century research that Mauro Coducci (c1440-1504) emerged from obscurity to be identified as the builder of many of the city's best buildings of this time - the churches of San Michele in Isola, San Giovanni Crisostomo and Santa Maria Formosa. His rival Pietro Lombardo (c1435-1515) was less concerned with the central tenets of the Florentine Renaissance than with using them to update the Venetian-Byzantine tradition. The tiny church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, for which he and his sons also made the decoration, shows his highly ornate style at its best.


The High Renaissance and Mannerism
The ornate facades characteristic of the Venetian Renaissance were to some extent repeated all across northern Italy, notably in the early buildings of Donato Bramante (1444-1514) in Milan . These include the church of San Satiro, which ingeniously incorporates a ninth-century chapel and makes up for the lack of space to build an apse by including a convincing trompe l'oeil of one; the centrally planned east end of Santa Maria delle Grazie, which completely outclasses the Gothic nave; and a series of cloisters for Sant'Ambrogio.
With the French invasion of the city in 1499, Bramante fled to Rome , where his enthusiasm coincided nicely with the papal authorities' desire to rebuild the city in a manner worthy of its imperial heyday, and the High Renaissance in architecture was born. This centred on the demolition of the fourth-century basilica of St Peter's , and its replacement by a vast new church. Bramante provided a design that was the ultimate in central planning, a Greek cross with four smaller Greek crosses in its arms. This project took well over a century to complete, by which time Bramante's plan had been altered out of all recognition, with only the piers of the dome surviving. Bramante's surviving masterpiece in Rome is the tiny Tempietto of San Pietro in Montorio, whose grandeur is out of all proportion to its size.
Bramante's position as leading architect in Rome was taken over by Raphael (1483-1520). His painting activities left him little time for this, but his few buildings were enormously influential. The Chigi chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo brought to fruition the interest in centralized temples first evident in his early panel of The Marriage of the Virgin (now in the Brera, Milan). It is deliberately set apart from the rest of the church, and opulently adorned with statues, bronze reliefs, paintings, marbles and mosaics, its richness reflecting that of the patron, the papal banker. His pupil Giulio Romano (c1492-1546) was active mainly in Mantua , where he consciously distorted the elements of classical architecture, thus beginning the Mannerist style. The Palazzo Te establishes an organic unity between house and garden, as well as between architecture and interior decoration. The artist's own house in the same city is very different but equally inventive, while his design for the duomo is an early example of a building concerned above all with effect, the intention being to "suck" the viewer towards the high altar.
Baldassarre Peruzzi (1481-1536), originally from Siena, built the most graceful of Rome 's High Renaissance palaces, the Villa Farnesina, which is arguably the outstanding secular monument of the time, featuring an unusual U-shaped plan with two superbly frescoed ground floor loggias and an upstairs hall with illusionistic architectural perspectives. The Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne from late in his career successfully overcomes the difficulties of its sloping site by means of a highly original convex facade. Peruzzi also built the pentagonal Villa Farnese in Caprarola in collaboration with Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (1485-1546), with whom he also worked on St Peter's. Sangallo's most important independent work, however, is the strongly classical Palazzo Farnese, the most spectacular Roman palace of its time.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) only took up architecture in middle age. His approach was in direct contrast to Alberti's, using plans only as a rough guide, and making constant changes throughout the period of execution. None of his major buildings were finished in his lifetime: his earliest commissions in Florence - San Lorenzo's Sagrestia Nuova (which forms a piece with his own sculptures) and the Biblioteca Laurenziana (where every element of the decoration is closely tied to the architecture) - already show an original approach to building. Like Giulio Romano, he adopted an entirely new attitude to space, and turned the vocabulary of classicism to suit his own ends. In Rome , he invented the giant order - columns and pilasters rising through two or more storeys - for his palaces on the Piazza del Campidoglio. Other major projects were the conversion of the central hall of the Baths of Diocletian into the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, and the work on St Peter's.
The High Renaissance was introduced to Venice by Jacopo Sansovino (1486-1570), who fled from Rome after its sacking by French troops in 1527. Sansovino quickly became the leading architect in the city, and erected a series of public edifices - the Zecca, the Loggetta and the Libreria Sansoviniana - which transformed the area around San Marco. The last-named is one of the most joyous, festive designs of the Renaissance, a highly successful compromise between classical precision and Venetian love of surface ornament.
Michele Sanmicheli (c1484-1559) spent much of his career on military projects, building the fortifications of his native Verona , including three dignified gateways, and the Fortezza at the entrance to Venice's Lido. He also built very grandiose palaces in both cities, which are especially notable for their facades of richly detailed stonework: the Palazzo Grimani on the Canal Grande and the Palazzo Bevilacqua in Verona are among the finest. The Cappella Pellegrini in San Bernardino, Verona, develops the idea of Raphael's Chigi chapel, while the later pilgrimage church of Madonna di Campagna in the same city is one of the most ambitious centrally planned churches of the sixteenth century.
Italy's most erudite and internationally influential architect was the Paduan Andrea Palladio (1508-80), who distilled features from all his great predecessors, welding them into a distinctive personal style. Palladio is associated above all with the city of Vicenza , which he adorned with a magnificent series of palaces, beginning with the so-called Basilica. In a spectacular piece of conjectural archeology in the same city, he built the Teatro Olimpico, the first permanent theatre since the days of antiquity. The villas he created for aristocratic clients in the surrounding countryside were much imitated elsewhere; indeed, they served as the model for British country houses until well into the nineteenth century. In the most famous, La Rotonda, Palladio put the architect's ideal of a central plan to secular use for the first time, and introduced identical temple-like fronts on all four sides of the building.
Genoa developed a distinctive architectural character of its own during the High Renaissance thanks to Galeazzo Alessi (1512-72), who made the most of the sloping sites common to this hilly city. His huge palaces typically feature monumental staircases and courtyards set on different levels. He also designed the commanding hilltop church of Santa Maria in Carignano, which borrows Bramante's plan for St Peter's.
In Florence , the Mannerist style took firm root in the wake of Michelangelo. Bartolomeo Ammannati (1511-92) is best known for his additions and amendments to the Palazzo Pitti, which more or less determined its final form, and for the graceful Ponte San Trinità. Bernardo Buontalenti (c1536-1608) was the city's quirkiest architect, celebrated mainly for the grottoes in the Bóboli Gardens and his designs for court spectaculars. Yet he also worked in a conventional idiom, as witnessed by the Fortezza Belvedere, the Tribuna of the Uffizi and the facade of Santa Trinita.
Both Ammannati and Vasari worked in Rome in collaboration with Jacopo Barozzi, known as il Vignola (1507-73), on the Villa Giulia, the city's finest expression of the Mannerist delight in architecture mingled with landscape gardening. Vignola also succeeded Michelangelo as architect of St Peter's, but his chief importance lies in the way he prepared the ground for the new Baroque style. The Gesù, mother church of the Jesuits, the order on which the Counter-Reformation was to depend so much, was Vignola's most important commission, and one which was imitated all round the world. His design was based on Alberti's Sant'Andrea in Mantua, eliminating the aisles and using the nave pilasters and lighting effects to draw the eye towards the high altar.
Vignola died before the Gesù was complete, leaving the facade to be built by Giacomo della Porta (c1537-1602). This imperious front places emphasis on the portal, and presents a highly unified design in which every component plays an essential role. Della Porta was also responsible for the construction and final shape of the dome of St Peter's, making it more ornate than Michelangelo had intended.
While Rome moved confidently into a new era, the High Renaissance was kept alive in northern Italy by Palladio's most faithful follower, Vincenzo Scamozzi (1552-1616). He completed many of Palladio's unfinished designs, and added the brilliant perspective stage set to the Teatro Olympico. Many of his original works imitate Palladio's most famous buildings: he built a broadly similar theatre at Sabbioneta, and modelled San Nicola da Tolentino in Venice on Il Redentore.


The Baroque
Although it may be difficult to pinpoint the exact period when Baroque began, it is recognizably a distinctive style in its own right. Politically, its birth is inexorably linked to Rome , a city which needed to reflect in a wealth of new buildings the brash, self-confident mood it had acquired as a result of the Counter Reformation, its architecture expressing both the pomp and mystery of the religious approach then being propagated. Architects became concerned with daring spatial effects, with rendering movement by the use of curvaceous lines and dazzling tricks of light, and with rich decoration of which painting and sculpture were integral components.
The first architect to build wholly within the new idiom was Carlo Maderno (1556-1629). Maderno's reputation has been sullied by his association with a major architectural failure, the completion of St Peter's by the addition of a nave and facade, which destroyed the balance of the Greek-cross plan and masked the view of the dome. Yet Maderno was really only marginally at fault: the clergy had always disliked the democratic nature of centrally planned churches, and it was the new hieratic spirit of the age which prompted the need for the extensions. The highly original facade of Santa Susanna and the dome of Sant'Andrea della Valle prove that Maderno was actually a highly capable designer. He also started Rome's most important seventeenth-century palace, the Palazzo Barberini, though this was much altered by later hands.
The overall appearance of Baroque Rome is owed above all to Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). Like Michelangelo, Bernini only took up architecture in mid-career, by which time he had established his reputation as the leading sculptor of the day. His fusion of the arts was to be one of the keynotes of the Baroque. His principal architectural achievements were in the field of town planning: he revamped the Piazza Navona, in the centre of which he placed a monumental fountain to his own design. Most brilliant of all was his surprisingly simple rearrangement of the square in front of St Peter's into an oval shape, with two sets of colonnades grouped to symbolize the embracing arms of the Church. The nearby Scala Regia is an equally clever design, with the steps, columns and vault all diminishing in size towards the summit to give a far greater feeling of grandeur than the restricted space would seem to allow.
Francesco Borromini (1599-1667), at first Bernini's assistant, but later his bitter rival, was the most daring and inventive Baroque architect. His attitude to decoration was very different to Bernini's, whose sculptural training he did not share. To him, architecture was sculpture in its own right, and he treated the entire wall surface plastically, favouring monochromal effects instead of colours. Even in his first commission, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Borromini showed his total disregard for convention, creating a stunning spatial design based on a complex series of shapes, with two equilateral triangles resolved into an oval at the level of the dome, and a circle in the lantern above. The facade, added later, was highly influential in its mixed use of concave and convex effects. Most of Borromini's subsequent buildings suffered from the handicap of having been begun by other architects. Nevertheless, he achieved many highly unusual effects, notably in Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, and in the seemingly independent towers flanking the dome of Sant'Agnese, a motif that was subsequently much imitated. Borromini's most prestigious commission was the internal remodelling of San Giovanni in Laterano, which transformed the early Christian basilica into a vast Baroque temple.
The third main architect of Baroque Rome was Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669). Surprisingly, Cortona desisted from the union of the arts beloved of Bernini, preferring instead whitewashed interior walls. Nonetheless, his mature work combines elements from both Borromini and Bernini: the facade of Santa Maria della Pace, for example, makes considerable play with concave and convex shapes, yet takes this further by rearranging the square in which it is set to form a kind of foyer.
Elsewhere in Italy, only a handful of seventeenth-century architects stand comparison with their Roman contemporaries. One of these was Francesco Maria Ricchino (1583-1658), whose buildings in Milan bear direct comparison with the most progressive designs in Rome. Bartolomeo Bianco (c1590-1657) adorned Genoa with some of the century's finest palaces, proving a worthy successor to Alessi in the way he turned the sloping ground to his advantage.
The leading Baroque architect in Naples was the Lombard Cosimo Fanzago (1591-1678), whose early buildings, notably the cloisters of the Certosa di San Martino, are restrained and classically inspired. Another south Italian centre for a distinctively exuberant, wilful form of Baroque was the little town of Lecce , which was adorned with a series of churches and public buildings by a group of architects whose leading light was Giuseppe Zimbalo (active 1659-86).
The only major Baroque architect in Venice was Baldassarre Longhena (1598-1682). His fame rests chiefly on the votive church of Santa Maria della Salute, whose distinctive domed silhouette makes the most of its prominent site. Longhena also built two of the Canal Grande's finest palaces, the Ca' Pésaro and the Ca' Rezzonico, though here he did little more than update Sansovino's forms.
Turin , which had previously played no significant part in Italian art and architecture, progressively took over from Rome as the leading centre of the Baroque. Carlo di Castellamonte (1560-1641) drew up an ambitious plan of the city, and built the Piazza San Carlo as its centrepiece. Even more significant was the arrival of the monk Guarino Guarini (1624-83), who was a brilliant mathematician as well as architect. Guarini was unusual among Italians in his interest in both Gothic and Islamic styles of building, but the prime influence on his development was Borromini. He used his mathematical skills to inflate the Roman architect's essentially small-scale approach into the grand manner in such commissions as the Collegio dei Nobili and the Palazzo Carignano. Both the Cappella della Santa Sidone, built at the east end of the duomo to house the Turin Shroud, and San Lorenzo feature fantastic conical domes and pyrotechnic spatial effects using a wide variety of shapes.
After a gap of a generation, Turin attracted another remarkable architect, the Roman-trained Sicilian Filippo Juvarra (1678-1736). In a twenty-year sojourn in the city, he was responsible for a wealth of buildings, including the planning of new districts, churches, palaces and countryside villas. His imposingly sited Superga basilica combines the pilgrimage church and monastery in a single unit, and is by far the finest of its type in Italy, fully worthy of comparison with its central European counterparts. However, Juvarra's masterpiece is the Palazzina di Stupinigi, an extravagantly decorous villa which uses a triaxial hexagonal design instead of the conventional rectangle.
In Sicily , the disastrous earthquake of 1693 led to a wholesale demand for new buildings. Accordingly, the island is richly endowed with flowery late-Baroque creations which are the nearest Italian equivalents to French and German Rococo. Essentially, they are derivative in nature, paying a heavy debt to Borromini as well as to the Churrigueresque style of Spain. The most individualistic architect was Giovan Battista Vaccarini (1702-68), who was particularly associated with the laying out of Catania . However, the much smaller planned town of Noto provides an even more visually satisfying ensemble.


Neoclassicism
The Neoclassical style, which reacted against the sumptuousness of late Baroque by returning to the most basic principles of classicism, is generally considered to have begun in Rome in the mid-eighteenth century. Yet long before that, while the century was still young, a number of architects in Venice had decisively moved against Baroque excesses, notably Giovanni Scalfarotto (1690-1764), whose San Simone Piccolo is demonstrably derived from the Pantheon.
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78) did more than anyone to popularize the Neoclassical approach in Rome. His inspired large-scale engravings of the city's ruins rank among the all-time masterpieces of graphic art, and were to have a wide circulation. His theoretical writings asserted the superiority of the architecture of classical Rome over Greece, and advocated a reinterpretation of its forms as the basis for a new style. As a practising architect, Piranesi is known only for Santa Maria del Priorato, a heavily symbolical church for the Knights of Malta, set in a pentagonal square.
A remarkable synthesis of late Baroque and Neoclassicism was achieved by Luigi Vanvitelli (1700-73) in the colossal royal palace of Caserta , whose ornate apartments with their long vistas show all the swagger of the old style, whereas the exterior has all the calm restraint of the new. His pupil Giuseppe Piermarini (1734-1808) became the leading Neoclassical architect in Milan, where he designed several severe palaces with long, unadorned facades, along with what became Italy's most prestigious opera house, La Scala.
Another celebrated theatre, La Fenice in Venice , is the best-known building by the city's most committed exponent of Neoclassicism, Giannantonio Selva (1751-1819). Although gutted by fire early in 1996, the opera house will almost certainly be rebuilt, as it was after an earlier fire in 1836. A certain French influence pervades the work of Giuseppe Valadier (1762-1839), who was given responsibility for remodelling the interiors of the cathedrals of Spoleto and Urbino while still in his twenties. Later he was based in Rome, where his commissions included the triumphal arch on the Ponte Milvio and the laying out of the Piazza del Popolo.
As with the other visual arts, architecture in Italy was in the doldrums for most of the nineteenth century. Because of the all-pervasiveness of the classical tradition, there was little of the confident modern reinterpretation of other styles which characterizes northern European building of this period. Only Giuseppe Japelli (1783-1852) stands as an exception to this. His masterpiece, the Caffè Pedrocchi in Padua , is firmly Neoclassical, but its extension is neo-Gothic, while his Teatro Verdi in the same city is based on Rococo, and his villas are modelled on Palladio.
The nineteenth century also saw some impressive examples of town planning. One of these was in Trieste , where the waterfront area was redesigned. In Turin , the work of the previous century was continued by the laying out of the Piazza Vittorio Veneto and Piazza Carlo Felice at opposite ends of the city. Later, Alessandro Antonelli (1798-1888) adorned the city with a huge iron supported tower, the Mole Antonelliana, originally intended as a synagogue, but converted into a museum.
The most original piece of planning was in Milan , whose status as the commercial hub of the emergent nation-state is symbolized by the construction of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II by Giuseppe Mengoni (1829-77) - Italy's first important example of design in iron and glass, and the initiator of a trend for covered shopping areas throughout Europe.
With the accomplishment of complete Italian Unification in 1870, Rome had to be supplied with new streets and buildings worthy of a great modern capital; inevitably, the most monumental classical style possible was chosen, and it was only a partial success. The most strikingly visible - if not the most aesthetically pleasing - late-Neoclassical addition to the city's patrimony is the huge white marble Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II by Giuseppe Sacconi (1853-1905).


The twentieth century
A reaction against the nineteenth-century infatuation with the imitation of historical styles came with the Art Nouveau movement, whose sinewy forms dominated European architecture and design in the early years of the new century. In Italy, where it was known as Liberty , its impact was less extensive than in most other countries and also more restrained. Giuseppe Sommaruga (1867-1917) was the most talented exponent; the most important of his buildings is the Palazzo Castiglioni in Milan.
Of far more long-lasting significance to the overall direction of Italian architecture was the Futurist movement, manifested in the visionary drawings of Antonio Sant'Elia (1888-1916), who envisaged a vibrant high-rise metropolis of the future dominated by frenetic activity and rapid transport systems operating on several levels. Sant'Elia's death in World War I meant that none of these visionary projects was ever realized. The only construction that gives a vague idea of what Futurist architecture might have been is the Monument to the Fallen in Como , which is based on a design by Sant'Elia for a lighthouse. The executant architect was Giuseppe Terragni (1904-43), the major exponent of Rationalism in Italy. This movement was strongly influenced by the ideas of the Bauhaus movement in Germany, and sought to use new materials in a modern way, to capitalize on space and light for a modern revolution where rational lines were cleared of the decorations and elaborations of past styles. Terragni founded the Gruppo 7, composed of Italy's seven most progressive inter-war architects, who fought to have Rationalism accepted above classicist architecture as the official architecture of Fascism. Terragni built several other works in Como, the most accomplished of which is the Casa del Fascio, originally the local Fascist Party headquarters.
During the twenty years of Fascism , Mussolini directed a massive building programme which left cities, towns and villages across the country shadowed by institutional buildings built in a monumental style reminiscent of those of ancient Rome. The colossal dimensions and imperial paraphernalia adopted by architects like Marcello Piacentini (1880-1960), Mussolini's favourite architect, who was responsible for the Piazza della Vittoria in Brescia , tended to be favoured over Rationalism. New towns like Sabaudia and Littoria near Rome were designed as prototype communities for the new "empire". But World War II put a stop to the building programmes and later caused the destruction of much of the built fabric of Italy's urban centres.
After the war the themes of memory, relationship with history and the search for a new identity became the central concerns of Italian architecture. The story of postwar architecture begins with two memorials : the monument to the 35 civilians killed in the massacre of the Ardeatine Caves in Rome and the monument to the victims of the German concentration camps in Milan's Cimitero Monumentale. The latter was designed by the studio BPR, a successful practice before the war called BBPR: the first "B", Gian Luigi Banfi, was killed in Mauthausen concentration camp towards the end of the war. The postwar years were also the years when New Realism dominated Italian culture from cinema to literature. It was a new language, free from the ties of the recent Fascist past. The critic Bruno Zevi (1918-1999) wrote about organic architecture as the architecture of democracy, where forms were freed from the strictures of straight lines in favour of curves.
Huge rebuilding programmes were undertaken as much to provide employment as to repair the devastation suffered during the war. Endless motorways were laid across the country and working class neighbourhoods were built on the outskirts of cities, public money often being used to subsidize private financial and speculative interests. The architecture was often subordinate to the political interests involved, and in the worst cases New Realism became synonymous with nostalgia and populism. However, as this approach flourished in Rome, there was a different atmosphere in Milan. Ernesto Nathan Rogers (1909-1969) of BPR (a close relative of the British architect Richard Rogers) was the personality behind the theory of continuity, the necessity for continuity with the ideals of prewar Rationalism without negating its critical revision. The most significant example of this architecture is the Torre Velasca by BPR in Milan. The giant torre civica is an intellectual interpretation of the disappearing medieval city.
During the Fifties and Sixties architectural tendencies or movements were overshadowed by the work done by several individual characters who defy categorization, the most important being Ignazio Gardella, Carlo Scarpa, and Pier Luigi Nervi. Ignazio Gardella (1905-1999) rejected exhibitionism in favour of the value of materials and forms. His most representative works are the Casa Borsalino in Alessandria and the Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea (PAC) in the Villa Reale in Milan , recently reconstructed after being destroyed by a Mafia bomb in 1993. The work of Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978) on the other hand, was infused with a very personal poeticism, always on the verge of refined excess. His exquisite detailing is superbly exemplified in the restoration of the Castelvecchio in Verona as a museum, and the reorganization of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice. Pier Luigi Nervi (1891-1979), an engineer, practised throughout the political turmoil of the twentieth century, unaffected by fashions or prevailing styles, and popularized the use of reinforced concrete. Among his prestigious postwar commissions are exhibition halls in Turin , whose amazing wide-span vaults recall his aircraft hangars destroyed during the war; the buildings for the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome and the Papal audience chamber in the Vatican. Nervi also provided the engineering core of Italy's most famous skyscraper, the Grattacielo Pirelli in Milan by Gio Ponti (1891-1979).
In the mid-Sixties the myths of New Realism were substituted by technological myths and egalitarian utopias. But the projects remained on the drawing board and paradoxically the radical social architects, like Andrea Branzi and Ettore Sottsass, found their only creative outlet was through industrial design , in particular, pieces commissioned by a wealthy, cultured elite. From this moment on, Italian architecture has been essentially architecture on the page - written or drawn - characterized by a lack of common thinking. The most important contributions have been theoretical (Giorgio Grassi and Aldo Rossi), and other architects have even become painters or writers (Massimo Scolari and Arduino Cantafora).
The few Italians who do construct are only able to build their best works abroad: for example Giorgio Grassi (b.1935), with his restoration of the Roman theatre in Sagunto in Spain, and Renzo Piano (b.1937), with the Pompidou Centre in Paris, in collaboration with Richard Rogers, and the Contemporary Art Museum for the Menil Collection in Houston, USA. It is perhaps significant that the two most important works of Italian architecture in the last twenty years have been a temporary installation, the Teatro del Mondo, built for the Biennale di Venezia in 1979, and a cemetery, that of San Cataldo, Modena, both by Aldo Rossi (1931-1997).
In the last few years, however, there have been signs of a reviving interest in architecture, and international competitions have multiplied. Renowned architects from abroad have been called in to work on historically and culturally important projects: Zaha Hadid (b.1950) for the contemporary arts centre in Rome; David Chipperfield (b.1953) for the extension to the cemetery of San Michele in Venice; and Enric Miralles (1955-2000) and Benedetta Tagliabue (b.1963) for the new school of architecture in Venice. It remains to be seen whether this will bring with it more work for home-grown talent.
 

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