robability of slighter construction
quarters fails to explain the lack of
constructed cities in the case of
anders Petrie says that the "slight
e ordinary people commonly dis-
the lapse of time.

This is the survival of the workmen's
un. Egyptian civilization spanned at

no gardens, but each house
its open court, just as in peasant hou-
that the ordinary workman had a
rooms, besides the open court; that
had four, five, or six rooms, with p-
sheds on the top. Larger houses
storeys, with a staircase. The high
mansions of over fifty rooms and

TEL-EL-AMARNA—‘MODEL VILLAGE’ FOR WORKMEN, 14TH CENT. B.C.

By courtesy of Sir Leonard Woolley and the Egypt Exploration Society

the sixth or the beginning of the fifth
B.C. to that of the first, and probably
zenith in the twelfth dynasty of
I, about 2650 B.C. It was he who built
pyramid as his own tomb, and the

courts. These occupied plots of al-
140 feet, and had large covered
square, presumably those in the
the northern side.¹ Egyptian wo-
times seem to have secured resp-

Figure 2.7 – Detail of north hill housing at Olynthus, built after 432 BC to a gridiron layout based on main streets running the length of the ridge (as Avenues A and B) with numerous cross-streets alternating with back alleys which divide the housing blocks into two parts. The tinted areas within the houses mark the internal courtyard around which the rooms are planned. As in the preceding historical periods, courtyard housing was the general pattern of Greek urban housing. This layout could well be part of a present-day housing scheme, perhaps designed in accordance with ideas put forward by Alexander and Chermayeff in their *Community and Privacy*, but note the variety of room arrangements within the standard house areas, indicative perhaps, of do-it-yourself building within a tightly controlled planned framework. Surely this is one of the directions in which twentieth-century urban housing should be moving?

Figure 2.11 - Priene, detail plan of the Agora (north at the top). Key: A-A, main east-west street across city; B-B, grid street continued through the southern stoa with access up by way of steps; C, main Agora space; D, colonnaded hall; E, fish- and meat-market; F, stepped grid footpath on hillside; G, the north stoa; H, Bouleuterion; J, Prytaneion; K, Temple of Zeus.

of the main open southern section of the agora, a space some 82 by 50 yards in area originally containing only one altar in the middle but acquiring in the course of time a number of other monuments and statues. Directly to the west of this portico is the main food market. The portico continues around the southern and eastern sides of the space, and then eastward to face the Sacred Stoa across what is in effect a 46-yard-long colonnaded street. The Temple of Zeus is in its own religious precinct immediately to the east. The main civic buildings are most on the north side of the main street.

Figure 2.12 - An artist's impression of Priene, a clear example of the form of a small Greek city of the period. The close-knit but ordered urban grain can be contrasted with that of Erbil - an organic growth counterpart - as shown by the aerial photograph reproduced in Figure 1.11. Key: A, Agora; B, Temple of Zeus; C, Gymnasium; E, Temple of Athena; F, Stadium; G, on far left, main entrance into city. (Drawing after A. Zippelius)

108.-109. MILETOS Plan and View

under the influence of Persia, and was destroyed during the revolt of the Ionian cities against Persian rule. Its conquerors sought to wipe it out as a Polis, but the few surviving citizens, strong in their faith in the eternity of the polis, restored and eventually rebuilt their community.

Miletus stands on a peninsula. At its west side two inlets form two harbors and also divide the city into three parts. The Agora and the ad-

147

# HISTORY OF URBAN FORM

## THE BASTIDES : FRANCE

In the early years of the thirteenth century, partly on the pretext of a religious crusade against the Albigensian heretics, the Languedoc region was conquered by the northern rulers after a bloody struggle which left it a land depopulated and exhausted by war, rich in resources, and sullenly hostile to its conquerors, ready for the victor to work his will on⁶¹. Like Edward I, later in the same century, the new rulers of the south relied on implanted bastide towns as a key factor in establishing their authority, building some hundreds of them strewn so thickly over the map that only a small proportion became real towns. St Louis, King of France, with his brother Alfonse, Count of Poitiers and son-in-law and successor to the last native Count of Toulouse, were the most active bastide builders and if the great king's bastides were the more enduring and important those of Alfonse were by far the more numerous⁶².

Several general principles were followed in the design of the French bastides, which in some respects made them differ considerably from their Welsh counterparts. As far as possible a square or rectangular area, enclosed by a defensive wall, was laid out with generally equal-sized house-building plots. But although this was the standard approach there were bastides of all sorts of eccentric outlines, as for example the exceedingly irregular Sauveterre-de-Guyenne, shaped almost like a pear. The bastides were invariably protected by a wall and a ditch but, in direct contrast to the Welsh practice, only in a very few instances by a castle. Generally only the site and its defences were provided by the founder; tenants were responsible individually for their houses, and collectively for the town hall and the church – the two main public buildings in the town. The town hall often took the form of a two-storeyed building, with the ground floor used as covered market accommodation: it stood in the main square of the town, at the meeting point of the main streets leading from the entrance gates. Alongside the square the streets were frequently within arcades formed beneath the first floor of the buildings. The church, often strongly built so that it could function as an emergency inner citadel, was generally located in a separate but frequently adjoining square. Within the town each settler received a standard-sized house plot, although there is evidence that important people often got several allotments assigned to them. Each house plot carried with it the condition that it should be built on within a stipulated period and that the house was to cover the entire street frontage. However, it would be wrong to consider this as an aesthetic requirement. Rather, it seemed to stem from considerations of defence.

## AIGUES-MORTES

As a result of the Albigensian crusade the territory of the king of France extended to the Mediterranean for the first time. Louis IX (St Louis) was now able to build himself a base for his first crusade to the Holy Land and in 1240 work was started on the new town and port of Aigues-Mortes. Progress by 1248 was such that this place was able to serve as the gathering point for the Seventh Crusade, led by Louis IX. In 1272 Phillipe le Hardi brought Simone Boccañegra from Genoa to add the massive defensive wall around the town. This wall, which still exists in its original form⁶³, is about 35 feet high and strengthened by fifteen engaged towers; it encloses

Figure 4.19 - South-western France, showing the location of Aigues-Mortes and Carcassonne related to major towns and to a group of bastides of both English and French origin, situated between the Dordogne and Lot rivers, within a circle of 25 km radius centred on Villeréal.

Figure 4.20 - Aigues-Mortes, general plan (north at top), alignment approximately as in Figure 4.21.

61, 62. T. F. Tout, *Mediaeval Town Planning*.

63. The wall and town of Aigues-Mortes, in happy contrast to Carcassonne, have not suffered obvious restoration and, as yet, have not been unduly spoiled by the considerable numbers of tourists it attracts.

HISTORY OF URBAN FORM

CARCASSONE

There are two towns of Carcassone - the old original cité on its hilltop, east of the river Aude, and the ville-basse on the lower ground across the river. Despite being heavily restored by Viollet-le-Duc and others during the last century, the cité exists as a unique example of a mediaeval fortified town complete with two rows of ramparts, church and castle. The preservation of the cité is indirectly due to the action of Louis IX in expelling its inhabitants in 1240 and subsequently permitting them to found the new town across the Aude. From then on the cité was used mainly for military purposes, whilst the ville-basse, surviving destruction by the English in 1355, steadily grew in size and importance as the chief town of the department of the Aude - one of the very few bastide foundations to have flourished to such an extent.

Figure 4.22 - Carcassone, the bastide ville-basse related to the original hilltop cité. on the other side of the Aude.

MONPAZIER

Monpazier is situated on the northern slopes of the valley of the upper Dropt. It was started in 1284 as a part of the system of defended towns which Edward I established to protect his territory in Gascony against French attack from the east, and to consolidate his authority over the district. Edward had been resident in Gascony since 1279, reorganising his administration there; in 1284 negotiations were completed for the site of Monpazier the landowner, the Duc de Biron, turning it over in return for an equal share in all revenues. Having selected the location Edward next wrote back to England asking for four men who knew how to arrange and order a new town 'in the manner most beneficial to us and the merchants'. It is not recorded how the request was answered, but the resulting layout is a classic of bastide planning in its regularity and relationships between the elements of the plan.

The town was laid out to the module of the standard house plot; these each had a frontage of 24 ft on to the 20 ft wide main streets, and a depth of 72 ft. Lanes 6 ft wide separated the plots at the rear. These house plots were grouped into twenty blocks, one of which was used for the market place, with part of a second (linked through at the corners) containing the fortified church. The market square contained the town hall and the well. Three streets ran through the town along the length of the ridge site, two of them being interrupted by the square; four further streets ran across the town, two of them forming the other sides of the arcaded central square. These streets passed through the ten gates in the wall. The latter had been completed by 1290; the church was added in the fourteenth century.

Each settler was given a house plot in the town, an 'allotment' close to the walls, and farmland in the vicinity. The house had to

Figure 4.23 - Monflanquin, detail plan, giving modern plot boundaries within the area of the bastide and showing the surrounding suburban development.

Figure 4.24 - Eight French bastide plans illustrating their essential 'variations-on-a-theme' character. Key: a, Villeréal; b, Lalinde; c, Castillonnes; d, Eymet; e, Villefranche-du-Périgord; f, Domme; g, Beaumont; h, Monflanquin.

WILHELMOSTADVM.

WILHELMOSTADUM in Ruy-
genhillenſi tractu, qui anno mil-
leſimo quingentefimo ſexageſi-
mo quarto exaggeratus dicitur à
Wilhelmo Auriaco, ad inhibendos hoſtium è
Brabantia infultus, exſtrui cœptum eſt. Do-
minium ejus Wilhelmo, Principi de publici
egregii bono optime merito, tradiderunt. Aër
hic graviffimus eſt; quod ante aliquot annos
cives Leydenſes experti; quorum plerique
morbo graviffimo contacti vitam cum morte
commutarunt.

HISTORY OF URBAN FORM

### NEUF BRISACH

In 1697 the Treaty of Ryswick finally forced France to withdraw from the line of frontier fortresses which she had established on the eastern bank of the Rhine during the half-century after the end of the Thirty Years War (1618-48). One of the most important of these fortresses was Alt Brisach, which controlled the principal river crossing on the long stretch of river between Strasbourg and the frontier with the Swiss Cantons' above Basle. A replacement west-bank fortress was required as quickly as possible.

Vauban selected a site above the seasonal flood level, just out of range of the guns in Alt Brisach on higher ground, some four miles away to the north-east, across the river. The location was the meeting point of important roads to Strasbourg, Colmar and Basle, as well as the Rhine crossing leading to Freiburg in Germany. In 1700 the Rhine here was a multi-branched river; the crossing consisted of several short lengths of bridge linking together a number of islands. On the largest of these the French had built a regularly planned *ville-neuve* during their period of occupation. A condition of the treaty required this town to be demolished, and it subsequently served as a source of building materials for Neuf Brisach. The first and second plans prepared by Vauban were rejected by Louis XIV;

Figure 6.28 - Neuf Brisach, location of the Vauban fortress town related to the Rhine, which in the late seventeenth century had a considerably wider flood plain than at the present day. Key: A, Alt Brisach; B, the French *ville-neuve*; C, left-bank bridgehead fortress; D, Neuf Brisach.

Figure 6.29 - General plan of Neuf Brisach, within the wall-proper of the defensive system. See the facing aerial view for the extent of the enveloping earthworks etc.

permission was given to proceed with a third in 1698. The military functions of Neuf Brisach were two-fold: it was to serve as a strongly fortified garrison town, from which forces could be deployed as required and its guns controlled the river crossing. In recognising the potential weakness of a civilian population in a military stronghold,

Figure 6.30 - Neuf Brisach and the surrounding countryside from the air (north at the top); the Rhine on the far right. This view also shows the strikingly contrasted form of several organic growth villages and the fascinating strip-farming patterns.

Vauban omitted it from his first plan but this was rejected as impractical¹⁴¹. The intricate system of fortifications was constructed by 1708, but the town within was not finished until 1772 when the church was completed. The quality of workmanship for the retaining wall section of the earthbanks was of a very high standard, and, with only a minimum of restoration in the past, the completed ring has survived through to the present day as probably the best remaining example of eighteenth-century military engineering. Although densely overgrown in parts the original form is clearly visible¹⁴².

Within the defences the town was laid out to a typical engineer's grid of expediency. Nine streets in each direction, including the

41. Christopher Cooke, Clare Hennessey and David Wardlaw, *Neuf Brisach*, 'RIBA Journal', Feb 1965.

42. Neuf Brisach has retained a military garrison which, when visited at Easter 1969, was beneficially engaged in clearing the undergrowth from sections of the fortifications.

160

161

unify, new, inspiring, and vital spatial
already existing features into a
more used in these adjaunces to print
Nancy. Plan. New elements
Three interrelated adjaunces at
71. HÈRE DE CORNY.

View.
Nancy, Place Stamplas, 1725-25.
Three interrelated adjaunces at
70. HÈRE DE CORNY.

Figure 6.20 - Nancy in 1645, seen from the west, with the mediaeval city to the left. (This view has the reverse orientation from the general plan as Figure 6.21.)

In 1736, having again taken possession of the city, Louis XV gave Nancy to his son-in-law, Stanislaus Leczinski, ex-King of Poland. Stanislaus was to prove an enlightened ruler, aware of planning deficiencies of his city in the context of urban progress during the three preceding centuries. The problem was essentially that of uniting the two parts, mediaeval and Renaissance, into one integrated urban structure. Here Stanislaus was fortunate to find a gifted architect-planner, Héré de Corny (1705-63), as his executive collaborator. De Corny was commissioned in 1753 and developed a scheme in several parts (its outline is superimposed on the existing city in Fig. 6.21). A new statue-square to Louis XV-now the Place Stanislaus-is the meeting point of two axial developments. The first of these axes provided a new main east-west route across Nancy, just within the line of the fortifications in the *ville-neuve*. Running

Figure 6.21 - General plan of Nancy showing the relationship of the eighteenth century redevelopment with the other parts of the city. The late sixteenth century Renaissance *ville-neuve* is to the left of the new east-west axis; the mediaeval city is to the right. This general plan and the detailed arrangement of the eighteenth century spaces, as Figure 6.22, have the same orientation. Key: A, Place Royale; B, Place de la Carrière; C, the Hemicycle; 1, the mediaeval city; 2, the *ville-neuve* of the seventeenth century; 3, the later public park; X-X, the new main cross-axis.

## Organic growth towns

Although when the Middle Ages opened towns were few and far between, the essential fact remains that by the eleventh and twelfth centuries practically all the settlements which were subsequently to develop into towns were established on their sites. Either they were the vestigial remains of Roman foundations, about to take on a new lease of life; or they were burgs, built in the ninth century as fortified bases and acquiring commercial functions later; or again they were agricultural, subsistence-economy village settlements, able to exploit geographical advantages and promote themselves from village to town status. These are the organic-growth towns of Europe and they constitute the great majority of mediaeval towns, although in some regions planned towns are in a local majority - notably in central Europe east of the Elbe.

### ROMAN ORIGINS

Any apparent contradiction presented by such a classification, where surviving Roman *urbes* became mediaeval organic-growth towns, is explained by the fact that, with but a few exceptions, the original Roman gridiron structure was lost during the decades, often centuries, when the town was deserted, or reduced to occupying only a small part of its earlier area. When rebuilding eventually took place it usually constituted unplanned organic growth of the mediaeval norm, the gridiron being ineffective.

Figure 4.10 - Chichester, the mediaeval plan. Founded as Noviomagus Regensium, this site, in common with other Romano-British settlements, is believed to have been deserted for a considerable period of time following the Roman evacuation. As re-established however, the main axial crossing of the *cardo* and *decumanus* formed the basis of the layout; other minor streets have also followed the original gridiron to varying extents.

A distinction should be made between the fate suffered by Romano-British towns, following the final withdrawal of the Roman legions in AD 407, and the changed circumstances of their continental contemporaries after the fall of the Roman Empire. During their occupation of Britain the Romans had imposed only a thinly spread urban culture on the essentially rural civilisation of the native Celtic tribes. The Romano-British towns were small, and even if London could boast some 15,000 inhabitants most towns barely averaged a tenth of that number³⁵. The invaders of the fifth century must have regarded the towns and villas as sources of plunder and objects of destruction. Celtic villagers had little to lose and for them the end of Roman rule was no overwhelming calamity³⁶. Perhaps, too, it was no more than an enforced return to their old way of life for the urbanised population. Lacking organised military resistance, they would have to take to the woods in the face of invasion. The result was a temporary end to urban

Figure 4.11 - Regensburg, three stages in the development of the city from its Roman frontier *castra* origin on the southern bank of the Danube. Although not completely deserted following the withdrawal of the legions, the layout of 1100 within the *castra* perimeter shows little sign of the original gridiron. This sequence of stages in the growth of a strategically situated town also illustrates the effect of fortifications as an urban form determinant.

35, 36. M. Sayles, *Mediaeval Foundations of England*.

Figure 3.18 – Pompeii, detail plan of housing *insulae* in western corner of city. The House of Sallust (Figure 3.19) is keyed as No. 16, forming the southern (bottom) end of the top lefthand *insula*.

theatres seating 5,000 and 1,500 persons, located near the old forum, and a magnificent oval amphitheatre, some 450 ft in length and capable of holding some 20,000 persons, in the eastern corner. With these three buildings alone able to accommodate almost the total population of the city, it is reasonable to assume that Pompeii functioned as a regional leisure and cultural centre. Near the forum to the north there were the two main public baths.

The forum area provided the main shopping and commercial facilities but flanking the main streets were many smaller shops and workshops. Although these uses formed part of the housing blocks, they generally stayed completely distinct from the dwellings themselves. The houses invariably followed the pattern whereby rooms faced into a central courtyard with only the entrance doors opening into the street. These houses were on two, three and as many as five or six floors in the undulating southern part of the city.

Figure 3.19 – Pompeii, plan of the House of Sallust. (The orientation of this house in the north-west corner of the city, has been moved anti-clockwise through 90° from its position in Figure 3.18). 'This house', writes Amedo Maiuri, 'notwithstanding the presence of *tabernae* on either side of its entrance and the changes wrought by the addition of a *viridarium* in the peristyle and of a small *pistrinum* in the west wing, is one of the noblest examples of a pre-Roman habitation of the Samnite period. The spacious Tuscan *atrium* with a large *impluvium* basin and great characteristic doorways narrowing towards the top, the walls of the airy *tablinum*, of an *oculus* looking upon the portico and of a *cubiculum*. all preserve to a great extent their stucco revetments' (Amedo Maiuri, *Pompeii*)

Priene, planned and built within a limited period, it has the same diagrammatic simplicity, unmarred by later displacements and renovations that busier towns subject to the pressures of growth would show¹⁴⁸. But the formal built-up pattern of Timgad, with virtually no incidental open space within its limits other than streets and public spaces, should be compared with the contemporary situation at Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester) in Britain. Here the native predeliction for informal groups of buildings in space had completely modified the imperial norm.

Figure 3.21 - Timgad, general plan of the settlement as excavated by the Direction des Antiquités, Gouvernement Général de l'Algerie. (Orientation is somewhat away from the cardinal points: the upper side faces north north-west. The scale as reproduced is approximately 1:3500.) Timgad is possibly the most regular example of imperial gridiron-based urban planning, which makes more strange the inconsistent alignment of the central forum space (13). The plan departs from general imperial practice in that there are no continuous cross-axes. Outside the original perimeter organic growth suburban accretion can be seen.

In the reconstruction model, above, of the palace of Split, the imperial gallery overlooking the Adriatic appears in the foreground, while the Golden Gate stands at the end of the central north-south street. Some details of the model (which was made by the architect Hébrard in an attempt to show the palace in its original state) are hypothetical.

Left, a diagrammatic plan indicating the layout and main features of the original palace, which is in the form of an irregular rectangle to conform with the sloping site.

Figure 5.4 - Turin, three stages in the development of the city from its days as a Roman colony to the late seventeenth century, showing the extent and complexity of the Renaissance fortifications in marked contrast to the simple two-dimensional walled perimeter of Roman and mediaeval periods.

Above: The plan of the original Roman city of Augusta Taurinorum with the street pattern modified during the later Middle Ages.

Centre: Turin at the beginning of the seventeenth century with the Roman core (A) surrounded by an earlier wall of the sixteenth century (B); the new areas are (C), a Renaissance extension; and (D), the citadel.

Below: Turin at the end of the seventeenth century with further extensions to the north-west and south-east and a further ring of fortifications.

BASIC DESIGN STRUCTURE

Within the range of cities built in Italy dur-
ing the medieval and Renaissance periods there
emerges a recurring theme if which there is a
direct and purposeful design extension from the
central square to an outward point where it clamps
onto an expression of the forces of the region.
Presented on these pages are four examples, drawn
to a common scale, all strikingly similar in their
basic concept.

TODI

The diagram emphasizes that the interlocking
squares are firmly positioned between vistas, one
in each direction, across the Umbrian hills. The
architecturally contained center square, affording
glimpses of nothing but overlapping façades of
buildings, establishes unequivocally the urban char-
acter of the city core, and makes more dramatic
the inrush of the countryside (shown in green), in
a narrow, sharply focused channel on the upper
platform before the cathedral, and in a broad ex-
panse at the end of the smaller square. The
identities of the town and countryside are kept
separate and are sharply defined within the indi-
vidual parts of the composition.

PERUGIA

Perugia, another Umbrian medieval hill town,
expresses the same design principles as does Todi.
The central square, with its ancient and beloved
fountain (shown by the circle), so skillfully inter-
related with the design of the cathedral on one
side and that of the city hall on the other, receives
the thrust of space defined by the street leading
in from the square overlooking the countryside.
The cathedral is turned so that it receives the im-
pact of the space movement broadside, which is
unusual for Gothic cathedrals.

At the other end of the connecting street two
squares are developed on each side of a public
building, and promenades extend along the angled
city wall, allowing wide vistas of the surrounding
terrain.

1:3000

FLORENCE

The medieval square of Florence, Piazza della Signoria, was originally conceived as an entirely self-contained urban center, with no thought of including in its design an expression of the forces of the region which sustains the city. It was a purposeful act of Cosimo de' Medici to cut through a jumbled area to the River Arno, and to commission Giorgio Vasari to design the Uffizi Palace as both a practical and an architecturally symbolic link between the town center and the River Arno. (The palace is positioned on either side of the street extension, drawn in yellow, leading to the river.) With superlative mastery Vasari fulfilled the hopes of his client. The palace visually interrelates the ancient monuments, the Palazzo Vecchio, the dome of the cathedral, and the sculpture in the Piazza della Signoria, and fuses the perpendicular movement from the square onto the movement along the course of the Arno, thus dramatizing the river's existence.

VENICE

The basic form of Piazza San Marco in Venice is similar to that of Piazza della Signoria in Florence, but the history of its development is different. In the port-oriented city of Venice, the open space which is now the Piazetta was part of the original design, leading to an only slightly larger space before the Cathedral of Saint Mark. Here the open space was principally an extension of the maritime space of the Grand Canal. Piazza San Marco, as we know it today, was a much later enlargement of the central open space, the formalized expression of the urban entity.

In all these examples the underlying design
theme is the establishment of a clear and powerful
expression of civic unity connected to some feature
expressive of the natural forces of the region.

1:3000

VITRUVIUS

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, as mentioned briefly earlier in this chapter, was an architect working in Rome at the time of Augustus – the emperor who, it is claimed, found Rome a city of brick and left it one of marble. Towards the end of a seemingly uneventful life Vitruvius produced certain essays on the theory and techniques of architecture and on related aspects of town planning and civic engineering. These, in effect a textbook of classical Roman practice, are known collectively as the *De Architectura* of Vitruvius. Its 'discovery' as such about 1412-14 added considerably to the momentum of the Renaissance in architecture, urbanism, and the arts generally. Its influence was again increased when the first of numerous Italian editions came out in printed form in 1521.

*De Architectura*'s early acclaim has not withstood the passage of time. Revered through much of the early Renaissance literally as a civic design gospel (an attitude not entirely dispelled), this work is now regarded only as that of an obscure and freely misinterpreted Roman authority on architecture²⁴. The parts of the *De Architectura* of real significance to urban history are the fourth to the seventh chapters of the first book. In these chapters Vitruvius outlines fundamental considerations to be observed in designing towns and

Figure 5.8 – Naarden, east of Amsterdam on the southern shore of the Zuider Zee, the epitome of a small, strongly fortified town of the late seventeenth century. The original fishing village was destroyed by fire in 1350 and Naarden was rebuilt by Count Willem V as a *nieuwestad* some 1000 yards further inland, linked to the Zuider Zee by a canal.

During the seventeenth century Naarden became a vital strategic location and between 1673-85 earlier walls were replaced 'by mighty installations in the Vauban style, comprising six great bastions and ravelins set in wide moats, protected gun emplacements and enfilade firing points and a vast network of covered routes and passages connecting armouries and ammunition stores to firing positions. The super-structure was dismantled during the nineteenth century, but the outlines of rampart and moat, as seen from the air, still present a most formidable appearance.' (Gerald L. Burke, *The Making of Dutch Towns*)

See also Figures 5.17, Palma Nova, and 6.30, Neuf Brisach, for two other aerial views of fortress towns.

24. Nikolaus Pevsner, *An Outline of European Architecture*.

THE RENAISSANCE: ITALY SETS A PATTERN

Howard at the end of the nineteenth century as the basis for his garden city proposals.) In his ideal city Leonardo was also centuries in advance of his time when he advocated multi-level separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic, with special routes reserved for the heaviest goods traffic. In regional planning matters it was he who, though still only a youth, first suggested the formation of a canal from Pisa to Florence, by means of certain changes to be effected on the river Arno.

Figure 5.14 – Leonardo da Vinci, prophetic sketches for a multi-level city.

### SCAMOZZI AND PALMA NOVA

Vincenzo Scamozzi (1552–1616) seems to have been exceptional among Italian Renaissance urban theorists in that his ideas were actually realised in practice. He is usually credited with building the small fortified town of Palma Nova which was started in 1593,

Figure 5.15 – Scamozzi, ideal city plan from his *L'Idea dell'Architettura Universale* (1615), notable for its use of the gridiron for internal layout, the hierarchy of squares and the introduction of a canal waterway system.

Figure 5.16 – Palma Nova (1593) the plan for which is generally attributed to Scamozzi. Adequate architectural detail is given in this reproduction for it to be seen that the regularity of the plan has not been complemented by standard building elevations.

although some writers have queried his authorship of the plan. In 1615, the year before his death, he published in Venice a comprehensive ten-volume work, *L'Idea dell'Architettura Universale*, in which he recorded his architectural experiences. Nine chapters of the second book are concerned specifically with the subject of military fortifications based on a comprehensive study of outstanding western European examples. In his treatise Scamozzi includes a detailed plan of a theoretical fortified city which has features in common with Palma Nova, except for one basic difference – its street system is organised as a gridiron within the defensive perimeter (Fig. 5.15).

Figure 4.18 – Diagrammatic illustration of two stages in the transmutation of a village into a market town: below, c 900; above, c 1100. Key C, common fields; P, pasture.

These sketch plans are based on conjectural stages in the growth of Hereford, as illustrated in Cecil Stewart's *A Prospect of Cities*. But Stewart, in missing this town's vital growth phase as a burg (as revealed in volume one of *Historic Towns*, edited by Mrs Lobel), has compromised the validity of his argument that trade alone made Hereford. Nevertheless, as abstract diagrams they admirably illustrate the general process of organic growth change from a riverside trading village, conveniently located by a ford, with temporary market stalls set up alongside through-routes, to a fully fledged market town.

The plan of c 900 also shows the entirely typical relationship of the built-nucleus to its surrounding fields, enclosed in turn by as yet uncleared woodland. (By c 1100 the limit of cultivation had been pushed farther out.)