Renaissance & Baroque Town Planning:
/Florence’s Piazza Annunziata and Wren’s Plan for Post Fire London
By Anthony Morassutti
Awareness of town planning in the epochs of the Renaissance and, later, the Baroque period of architecture in Europe was emergent. Borne from the medieval castle-centric hodge-podge of unplanned towns, whose randomness seems more a product of complacence and self-preservation than of civic order and pride, town planning emerges as a doctrine that “aim[ed] at cohesive and unified composition.” (Moughtin 63) Florence’s Piazza Annunziata and Christopher Wren’s Plan for Post-Fire London are two examples of Renaissance and Baroque town planning, respectively, which will be examined to illustrate the developments present during these periods in the history of urban design.
Built during the 15th Century in the city-state of Florence, the Piazza Annunziata is a remarkable example of setting public and commercial buildings in an urban environment to create an open-air civic area. The resulting Piazza is a concept that is still reflected in modern Urban Planning, exemplified in Toronto by examples such as such as Toronto’s Nathan Philips Square and Dundas Square. The buildings that create the Piazza were erected at different times during Florence’s