Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 14.djvu/145

MUNICIPAL AKCHITECTUBE. 113 MUNICIPAL ARCHITECTURE. and coiistitutiuii. Many of these guilds had supaiate buildinyji for their meeliugs and they Usually repeated oil a smaller scale the archi- tectural features of the couununal palaces. The Loggia dei ilereaiiti at Bologna, those at Ancona and Perugia, the Or San ilichele at Florence, are a few among many. The lawyers' guild sometimes built sumptuoirsly, as in the Palazzo dei (iiure- eousulti at Cremona. In the ease of some of the veiy powerful Plemish guilds, such as the cloth guild, their buildings equaled or surpassed the average town-hall; this was the case at Ypres. In some cases the governing body had a separate [lalace from that where the popular meetings were held. Thus at Pistoia there was a Palazzo del Comune and also a Palazzo del Podesta. Other associations besides the guilds erected common hulls: the religious fraternities, such as that which built the Bigallo in Florence, or the vari- ous beautiful buildings in Venice. Hospitals, like the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence, the Hospital at Jlilan, and the Jlisericordia at Arezzo, are distinctly public monuments. The most important of the minor works of municipal architecture were the bridges (q.v. ), fountains (q.v.) , and gates. The first two classes have been treated under their separate heads, so that it will be necess;irv to describe only the city gates. During the Middle Ages the fortitication of cities by heavy walls wa.s a universal custom and the gates were fully as important as the triumphal arches and gateways of Roman cities. The great gate at Liibeek and several gates at Florence show the German and Halian styles. They were usually dedicated to a saint and con- tained a shrine and frescoes or carved images in the central opening; guardrooms on the sides and above contributed to making the gate a monu- mental structure. The round or pointed single archway wa.s often Hanked by two towers, as in the Porta della Vaeca at Genoa. In so far as the general arrangement of the larger mediaeval cities is concerned, the Cathedral Square was the main centre of the city, the market-place and a place of resort; but wherever there was also a strong municipal civic organiza- tion there was also a second .square dominated by one or more city buildings and kept free for public assemblies. Seldom do we find a single square used for both classes of buildings. MoiiAMMEnAN. There was far more of munici- pal architecture in the mediaeval Mohammedan cities of the Orient than Europeans realize. The hazaars with their long covered galleries rivaled the gallery arcades of modern cities; the Ihnns and caraimnserais with their immense courts were often on a colossal scale. Number- less sehils or fountains were dotted through the streets. The city gates were monumental. The alrarrirs were an interesting eomliination of gov- ernmental palace and fortress. There were nu- mennis hospitals and colleges with attached mosques and mausoleums, as at Ispahan. Few European cities showed so ample a display as Bagdad, Cairo, Damascus. Adrianople. Constanti- nople, or even the medi:r'val cities of second rank, like Fez. Kairwan. Emesa, and a hundred more. The Mohammedan engineers in Western Asia were famous for their bridges, fortifications, and castles. The great wealth and advanced culture of the Arabs. Moors, and Persians, and of the Moslem Hindus — far superior to that of the West in the Middle Ages — made it easy to build up beautiful cities, now all reduced to squalor and ruin. Re>aiss. ce. While the Renaissance was more fruitful in works of private and religious arclutectuie than in municiiJal arcliiteeture, a great mimber of notalde buildings were erected for public purposes in the cities of Italy and of Western Europe. The general downfall of civic liberties checked the progress of some phases of municipal architecture, but the change of style ushered in by the Renaissance led to the erection of many new edifices in the more modern style. Thus in Italy the elegant town hall at Verona (Palazzo del Consiglio), by F'ra Giocondo (1470) ; the town hall at Padua, the Loggia del Papa at Siena, the Procurazie Veeehie at Venice, belong to the lifteenth century; to the sixteenth, the Library of .Saint Mark, and the Loggetta of the Campanile (demolished by the fall of the tower, ltlU2). at 'eniee, the magnifi- cent arcade surrounding the ancient 'Basilica' at Vicenza, by Palladio, and many loggias and ad- ministrative palaces in other cities. The HOtel-de- Ville at Paris (1540). the town halls of Rheinis, Rouen, and other French cities, and even of small towns like Beaugency, erected in the sixteenth century; the great town halls of Antwerp and of several Dutch cities, and the jiicturesque Rat- huuser or council halls of Bremen, Nuremberg, Altenburg, Cologne, and other German cities, prove that there was still opportunity for effective and beautiful municipal buildings. Fountains were also multijilied, often of great elaboration and sculptural splendor. (See Foun- tain.) In the seventeenth and early eigliteenth centuries there developed a remarkable move- ment for the embellishment of cities by the decorative treatment of open squares and spaces. Of this movement the piazza in front of Saint Peter's, with its colonnades, obelisk and fountain, and the Piazza del Popolo, both at Rome, and the Place de la Concorde and Place VendOme at Paris, are the finest e.xamples. It was in the eighteenth century that a new era of municipal architecture commenced in Ciermany with the transformation of Berlin under Frederick the Great, followed by that of JIunich in the first half of the nineteenth century, and then by that of Vienna, and that of Paris by Baron Haues- mann under Napoleon III. New classes of build- ings were developed and erected : museums, pic- ture and sculpture galleries, halls of fame, thea- tres, and public educational buildings. Every style of architecture was employed, but mainly the neo-classic and neo- Renaissance. The triumphal arch again came into vogue. Great boulevards became the fashion. The old-fashioned narrow streets were discredited, even in Italy. The sun was let in cverj'where. Recent Det;lopment. Eirope. Of the more recent development of municipal architecture, Paris. Vienna, and Budapest stand out as the most conspicuous examples; but Berlin, Munich, and other ficrman cities, Rome and Naples, and in less degree many other cities in Europe have undergone a process of architectural remodeling. The great operations undertaken by Napoleon III. in Paris under Haussmann's direc- tion included not only the reform of the city's street-plan, but also the erection of many public buildings. This work, interrupted by the fall of the Empire, was resumed under the Republic, and has been steadily prosecuted ever since, at