- The Crisis of the Baroque
- Decentering the European Imaginary: A Baroque Taste for India
- Line and Trait of the Baroque River
- Water in The Baroque Garden
- Fashioning the Baroque Male
- Antinomies of the Twenty-First-Century Neobaroque: Cormac McCarthy and Demian Schopf
- The Automaton
- The Baroque City
- Surface and Substance: Baroque Dress in Spain and France, 1600–1720
- Baroque Dance
- Ibero-American Architecture and Urbanism
- Baroque Organ Music
- Ottoman Baroque
- Baroque Opera
- Machine Plays
- Ornamentation
- The Organization of Knowledge from Ramus to Diderot
- Experience and Knowledge in the Baroque
- Conversation and Civility
- The Philosopher’s Baroque: Benjamin, Lacan, Deleuze
- The Spanish Baroque Novel
- Baroque Tragedy
- The Baroque as a Literary Concept
- Baroque Discourse
- Classical Defense of the Baroque
- The Baroque and Philosophy
- The Baroque as Anti-Classicism: The French Case
- Is There a Baroque Style of Preaching in Early Modern France?
- Prayer, Meditation, and Retreat
- Baroque Sexualities
- Paradoxes: Baroque Science
- Baroque Diplomacy
- The End of Witch-Hunting
- Time and Chronometry
- Court Spectacle and Entertainment
- The Baroque State
Abstract and Keywords
The city was a primary theater of Baroque rhetorical projection. At once political, anagogical, and aesthetic, from its built form to the ephemeral structures and processions that animated it, the Baroque city was shaped into a theatrical space. The city was also a microcosm, a world in miniature. Political means were directed toward the representation of civic harmony, the concordance of the civic and the celestial, and the mirror of Justice; beauty was not only an aesthetic experience, it was a sign of a harmonious society. This chapter focuses on several cities that are representative of some critical aspects of Baroque urbanism. Beginning in Rome, where many of the techniques of Baroque urban design were generated, it tracks their propagation to Paris and across France, to Germany, and finally to Amsterdam. The picture that emerges depicts those characteristics of the Baroque city that made it both unique and influential.
Keywords: Baroque city, urbanism, public realm, tragic stage, urban theater, urban design, urban history, Baroque theater
David Mayernik is a practicing architect and artist, and Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame. He is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and the RSA, and a winner of the Gabriel Prize. The author of Timeless Cities (Basic Books) and The Challenge of Emulation in Art and Architecture (Routledge), he has written extensively on urban history and theory. For several seasons he designed and painted stage sets for the Haymarket Opera company of Chicago’s historically-informed performances of Baroque operas.
Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.
Please subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.
For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.
- The Crisis of the Baroque
- Decentering the European Imaginary: A Baroque Taste for India
- Line and Trait of the Baroque River
- Water in The Baroque Garden
- Fashioning the Baroque Male
- Antinomies of the Twenty-First-Century Neobaroque: Cormac McCarthy and Demian Schopf
- The Automaton
- The Baroque City
- Surface and Substance: Baroque Dress in Spain and France, 1600–1720
- Baroque Dance
- Ibero-American Architecture and Urbanism
- Baroque Organ Music
- Ottoman Baroque
- Baroque Opera
- Machine Plays
- Ornamentation
- The Organization of Knowledge from Ramus to Diderot
- Experience and Knowledge in the Baroque
- Conversation and Civility
- The Philosopher’s Baroque: Benjamin, Lacan, Deleuze
- The Spanish Baroque Novel
- Baroque Tragedy
- The Baroque as a Literary Concept
- Baroque Discourse
- Classical Defense of the Baroque
- The Baroque and Philosophy
- The Baroque as Anti-Classicism: The French Case
- Is There a Baroque Style of Preaching in Early Modern France?
- Prayer, Meditation, and Retreat
- Baroque Sexualities
- Paradoxes: Baroque Science
- Baroque Diplomacy
- The End of Witch-Hunting
- Time and Chronometry
- Court Spectacle and Entertainment
- The Baroque State