Transformation of the City

Another thing I talked about with my supervisor was the transformation of large Italian cities. In the middle ages there were streets with very narrow houses built along each street. The Middle Ages saw the emergence of trade squares and was a very commercial period. Due to this, each house had a space beside it where they could have a shop. After the middle ages, in the Renaissance, richer families would buy a lot of the little houses and transform them into big palaces. There was a sort of competition between noble families of who could create the larges houses and palaces. They would garnish their houses with fancy gardens and decorations to show their wealth. The wealthy also transformed public spaces. The rich families would pool together money to create something that could be used by them. For example, in Bergamo, families in the upper town gathered together their money to pay for a theater uptown because downtown had a theater and they did not. This was not only a matter of convenience in the close location of the theater, but it was also a display of power by the wealthy families. Families would also put a lot of money into family tombs, and art for the church. One wealthy man destroyed part of an established church in order to make his own chapel.

In Rome there was a change in structure during the Baroque period (late 1500s- early 1600s). The structures of the middle ages were destroyed and larger streets were made. These streets typically had two circular centers on either side. These circles would consist of gardens or other public spaces. There was not as much Baroque architectural change in Northern Italy, but it was significant in places like Rome and Sicily.

One more thing that brought a lot of change to the towns were Railways. When the railways were built, new connections between towns were established. This was a typical transformation of Italian towns in the 1800s. The creation of railways changed the structure of the town. The railways were built outside of the previously established town. New roads were built to connect the towns to the railways and eventually the city expanded to include the railway station and the area around it.