The Italian Piazza Transformed: Parma in the Communal Age - Hardcover

Marina, Areli

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0271050705 ISBN 13: 9780271050706

Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012

Synopsis

During the long thirteenth century, the cities of northern Italy engendered a vital and distinctive civic culture despite constant political upheaval. In The Italian Piazza Transformed, Areli Marina examines the radical transformation of Parma’s urban center in this tumultuous period by reconstructing the city’s two most significant public spaces: its cathedral and communal squares. Treating the space of these piazzas as attentively as the buildings that shape their perimeters, she documents and discusses the evolution of each site from 1196, tracing their construction by opposing political factions within the city’s ruling elite. By the early fourteenth century, Parma’s patrons and builders had imposed strict geometric order on formerly inchoate sites, achieving a formal coherence attained by few other cities.

Moreover, Marina establishes that the piazzas’ orderly contours, dramatic open spaces, and monumental buildings were more than grand backdrops to civic ritual. Parma’s squares were also agents in the production of the city-state’s mechanisms of control. They deployed brick, marble, and mortar according to both ancient Roman and contemporary courtly modes to create a physical embodiment of the modern, syncretic authority of the city’s leaders. By weaving together traditional formal and iconographic approaches with newer concepts of the symbolic, social, and political meanings of urban space, Marina reframes the complex relationship between late medieval Italy’s civic culture and the carefully crafted piazzas from which it emerged.

About this title

About the Author

Areli Marina is Assistant Professor of Architectural History, Art History, and Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0271050705
• ISBN 13: 9780271050706
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192