WTI Magazine #24    2014 Apr, 04
Author : Enrico De Iulis      Translation by:

No time like the Renaissance had an almost obsessive attention to the ideal city. The urbanization that has characterized the first phase of this cultural revolution, which will be later historiographically known just as "Renaissance", immediately led scholars of architecture of that period to confront with a very much felt challenge at that time: the challenge of the ideality.

So architects and also very famous scholars such as Leon Battista Alberti, became forerunners to the next generation that faced in full and in practice this topic. During the Lordship era, the theme of "Good Government" had been taken as an example for the proper functioning of the city: but it was only with the rise of the urban areas and with the increasing concentration of population in the cities, that even the layout of the space and its function in the urban grid had assumed paramount importance.

It was important for trade, for the security and control, and for the representation of daily living: and so mainly in central Italy, thanks to the strong push of the courts of Florence, Urbino and Ferrara, the principle of idealism was applied to all human activities.

The three fundamental virtues for an ideal city were the "Utilitas", as to say the functional structure of the roads and the location of the buildings; the "Firmitas", as to say the Roman historical and cultural roots, that during the Renaissance was an all-encompassing model, but in architecture and engineering building was the right thing to promote; and "Venustas", as to say the décor and the beauty of homes, buildings and open spaces.

These are the premises of the conception in Urbino of the painting known as the "Ideal City" along with his two complementary in Baltimore and Berlin. In this climate of strong Neoplatonic imprint Urbino, with Francesco Laurana and Francesco di Giorgio Martini, regains a new shape, enough to even be called the "city in a building": but Pienza is where that the real model of the ideal city will be accomplished.

Enea Silvio Piccolomini, a noble prelate in Siena, was born in Corsignano in Val d'Orcia in the early fifteenth century: many years later, in 1458, he became pope under the name Pius II. Once announced the Council of Mantua only a year later, he was passing through his native town, headed towards the city in Lombardy. The country was in such a state of neglect and decay, that the pope decided to raze the old Corsignano and in its place to give birth to Pienza, a town entirely built on the criteria of the ideal city.

This task was assigned to the esteemed Bernardo Rossellini, pupil of Alberti and for this informed on all the components needed to build a great city. The result is still surprising. The main square of Pienza is a sort of suspension of time, a ratio of three buildings and a church perfectly calibrated: a fourth painting of the ideal city, but livable and beautiful.

Of all the other cities that underwent improvements and expansions in the last part of the fifteenth century, only Pienza has such a strong evocative tension, a purity of form and intent that Urbino and Ferrara fail to reach, having faced only partially revisions in the roads and in the main buildings of the historic center. Pienza is since 1996 a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a journey well worth taking to revive in full the origin of the beautiful Italian and of the aesthetic constructive thinking that has made valuable most of Italy.