Urban Scale Architecture

This book is the fruit of a research started in the early´80´s on the theme of Italian Renaissance "architectural squares": in particular, its interest was focused on that limited number of realisations, carried out in about three decades (1492-1525), which are considered as the first application of the humanistic principles of the forum-square meant as a public space delimited by architecturally homogeneous edifices with arcades.
The four squares of Vigevano, Ascoli Piceno, Carpi and Florence, even if diversified in their single architectural-formal accomplishments, belong in fact to the same climate of cultural renovation, which towards the end of the fifteenth century was spreading from the capital cities to the minor centres, and stand out as main points of a process of revolution and renovation of the urban forms which through the great monumental realisations of the Renaissance at its best brought to the progressive reshaping of some of the most important cities in Europe.