Even if Italy's architecture
has not been so consistently
influential as its painting
and sculpture, the country
still boasts a remarkable
legacy of historic
buildings, an almost
unbroken tradition
stretching back over more
than 2500 years. As in the
other arts, strong regional
distinctions are evident in
most of the main
architectural periods.
Gordon McLachlan
with contributions by Lucy
Ratcliffe
The Greeks and Etruscans
The earliest important
structures still standing in
Italy were built by the
peninsula's Greek colonizers
of the sixth century BC.
These exhibit the same
qualities characteristic of
the classical architecture
of Greece itself: a strong
but...
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The Roman period
In architecture, as in many
other fields, the Romans
borrowed from and adapted
Greek models. Just as was
the case with other art
forms, however, their
approach to building shows
marked differences,
particularly in their
preference for order...
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Early Christian and
Byzanthine
The early Christians in
Italy initially had to
practise their religion in
private houses and
underground in catacombs
hollowed out of the rock.
Those in Rome are the most
famous, but other impressive
groups can be seen in
Naples...
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Romanesque
The European emergence from
the Dark Ages in the tenth
and eleventh centuries is
associated in architecture
with the Romanesque style,
which in Italy draws heavily
on the country's own
heritage. Features not
commonly found in other
countries...
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The Gothic period
The Gothic style, which
placed great emphasis on
light and verticality, and
was associated with the
pointed arch, rib vault,
flying buttress and large
traceried windows,
progressed from its
mid-twelfth-century French
origins to become the...
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The early Renaissance
The Gothic style maintained
a firm hold over northern
European architecture until
well into the sixteenth
century. In Florence ,
however, it had been
supplanted by the second
decade of the fifteenth
century by the new,
classically derived ...
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The High Renaissance and
Mannerism
The ornate facades
characteristic of the
Venetian Renaissance were to
some extent repeated all
across northern Italy,
notably in the early
buildings of Donato Bramante
(1444-1514) in Milan . These
include the church of San
Satiro,...
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The Baroque
Although it may be difficult
to pinpoint the exact period
when Baroque began, it is
recognizably a distinctive
style in its own right.
Politically, its birth is
inexorably linked to Rome ,
a city which needed to
reflect in a wealth...
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Neoclassicism
The Neoclassical style,
which reacted against the
sumptuousness of late
Baroque by returning to the
most basic principles of
classicism, is generally
considered to have begun in
Rome in the mid-eighteenth
century. Yet long before...
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The twentieth century
A reaction against the
nineteenth-century
infatuation with the
imitation of historical
styles came with the Art
Nouveau movement, whose
sinewy forms dominated
European architecture and
design in the early years of
the new century. In
Italy,...
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