Joseph Connors - Borromini and Roman Urbanism

BORROMINI AND ROMAN URBANISM
Author(s): Joseph Connors

Source: AA Files, No. 2 (July 1982), pp. 10-21
Published by: Architectural Association School of Architecture
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1. Lievin Cruyl, view of the Quattro Fontane, with Borromini's unfinished S. Carlino at the left, 1665 (Cleveland Museum).
10
BORROMINI
AND ROMAN URBANISM
by Joseph Connors
In about 1675 an anonymous French tourist in Rome visited the S. Agostino, in 1657, but little or nothing was done to implement
intersection known as the Quattro Fontane, the Four his plans. The one reference to streets in his book, the Opus
Fountains, which had become a favourite spot among the Architectonicum, is simply a comment on how hard it is to lay out
Romans for a summer stroll (fig. 1): a straight line for building projects in the crowded, crooked
streets of downtown Rome:
It is one of the beautiful places in Rome. The Strada Viminale and the
Strada Felice cross as such strict right-angles that nothing could seem In drawing the first lines (of the Casa dei Filippini) the problem was
more exact, and since the two streets are very straight and correspond encountered of departing from the orthogonal, which is frequently
more or less to the four principal winds there is hardly any time when one encountered in new buildings in densely inhabited quarters, especially in a
cannot feel a pleasant breeze ... Around seven o'clock in the evening in city like Rome. Similar disorders arose in laying out the Collegio
the summer one sees many people packed into this small space, who, hat Romano, which hardly has a right angle in it, though all of this is
in hand, stop for hours to enjoy the air, per godere Varia as they say ... disguised in the thickness of the walls. The Casa Professa (of the Jesuits)
They stay silent, as if they were at some important event where it were exhibits its irregularities on the inside and the outside. In the Palazzo
forbidden to speak ... I stopped there myself, less to enjoy the cool air Borghese the facades were bent to fit the streets, and similarly everyone
than to see the long perspectives made by the streets. Maybe they are not who builds a new building in crowded quarters is subject to such
as beautiful as the Rue de Richelieu or so many others in the new quarters imperfections. Among the ancients even the Emperor Nerva Traiano
of Paris, but they offer more pleasant charm.1 (i.e., Augustus) was subject to such problems in the building he built, all
out of line, at the Catacumeni (i.e., the wall behind the Temple of Mars
Obviously this observer enjoyed straight streets and long Ultor in the Forum of Augustus)?
perspectives, and even if he himself happened to be French, his
tastes were entirely in accord with the best traditions of Italian However, I would like to maintain that there are other kinds of
urban theory. The classic treatises of the Italian Renaissance put urbanism operative in 16th- and 17th-century Rome which allow
the emphasis on straight streets, regular planned piazzas, long us to see Borromini as an urbanist of major importance. I would
vistas of sight organised according to the newly discovered rules suggest that there is an urbanism of stance and of encounter, one
of perspective, and the ideal reconstruction of the Vitruvian expressed in the way that buildings relate to each other across
forum. Theory was turned into practice in the great streets of the narrow, irregular streets. Even streets that seem haphazard and
Roman High Renaissance, such as Bramante's Via Giulia, where unplanned emerge as products of a different kind of planning,
the theatrical effect of long perspective vistas was merged with one in which streets and piazzas take shape around individual
projects to create a Forum Julium on a Roman imperial scale. buildings, and express some of the self-image of the families or
Much of the heritage of Roman Renaissance planning was corporations that shaped them. My task will be to outline the
summed up in the great projects of Sixtus V (1595-1590), who laid patterns of this kind of urbanism, to decipher some of its
out relentlessly straight streets in the underpopulated outskirts of imagery, and to search for its aesthetics. If the straight streets and
the city and created the intersections like the Quattro Fontane that grand formal spaces of the Renaissance and Baroque periods
offered such splendid views. In the 17th century the tradition of speak a splendid rhetoric, then the seemingly disordered streets
grand planning was embodied in the great papal piazzas such as and spaces speak a kind of vernacular, or patois, sometimes
Bernini's Piazza San Pietro (1656-1667), where a geometrical plan drifting into chatter. But it is a language worth trying to
is used by a master of the psychology of perception to manipulate understand, especially since architects like Borromini were
vision, to control enormous crowds, and to recreate ancient attuned to it or spoke it.
porticoes in the form of a new theatre of Christendom.2 The first step is to make sense out of the Roman street system in
Against this backdrop of master plans created by masterminds, the Campus Martius, for example as it appears on the famous
an architect like Francesco Borromini (1599-1667) appears to play Nolli map of 1748 (fig. 2). The first thing that strikes the viewer,
a very minor role. Borromini wrote no treatises on urbanism. He and that struck the authors of 16th- and 17th-century pilgrims'
never had the opportunity to participate in any master plan. He guidebooks, is the great confusion in the street pattern. Of
drew up projects for the design of one small piazza, the Piazza di straight streets there are few and of grid patterns almost none.
AA FILES no.2 11
The key is to look instead for what I would call an arterial system When straight streets are superimposed over the earlier arterial
of streets. The main bridge that crosses the Tiber into the city system, they are always statements of political policy. They
from the Vatican, the Ponte S. Angelo, feeds a wide street, like an celebrate alliances, enhance the position of family palaces, and
aorta, that soon branches into two smaller curving arteries, which point to specific goals. For instance, the configuration of streets
in turn come to forks and branch again. The process repeats itself at the northern tip of the city, the Piazza del Popolo (fig. 2), looks
until the streets have forked and broken up into small capillaries, at first glance like a Haussmannian rond point but in fact began
that never quite give out but run on and on to feed the inhabited with a single dominant street, Leo X's Via della Ripetta, laid out
parts of the city. Obviously the forks are important points. They by Raphael and Sangallo in about 1516.5 It is the left-hand street
were places of choice and possibly of lingering for pedestrians of the three that make up the trident, and the one from which the
walking along the arterial system. Shops in the forks brought side streets in both directions take their orientation by being set at
higher rent, and both prestige and a view were there to right angles to it. It pointed at a number of related buildings all
compensate for the awkward shapes of the sites. They offered begun or redone at this time, in particular the Medici palace (Leo
opportunities that seldom went unexploited. A famous X was a Medici) and the French national church of S. Luigi dei
Renaissance hotel, the Albergo dell'Orso, occupied the fork at the Francesi. It was no coincidence that the Pope was projecting a
upper right corner of the Campus Martius on the map, and in marriage alliance with the French king at just this time. The two
1525-27 the Roman mint, the Zecca, was built at the first and other streets in the trident attracted development only later, and
most important fork in the system, with an imposing curved as a result they manage to set the orthogonal direction for the side
facade designed by Antonio da Sangallo (fig. 3).4 streets only in one direction, to the right on the map, towards the
2. G.B. Nolli, plan of Rome, detail showing the Campus Martius on the left and the 'trident'
of Piazza del Popolo on the right, 1748.
12 3. Antonio da Sangallo the younger, facade of the Roman mint, 1525-27.
t.
3&
underdeveloped land under the Pincian hill. What happened was
a gradual development from left to right as population moved,
and rather than a rond point a better image for the configuration
might be a pendulum that has taken a generation to make a single
swing.
Given the ways that Roman blocks, or isole, took shape?the
arterial patterns, straight streets pointing to targets, smaller
streets set at right angles to these dominant streets?one might ask
how architects reacted to the property boundaries that were given
them. Obviously, most reacted by passive acceptance. For
instance, the enormous Palazzo Borghese (fig. 4) was built in
stages between 1560 and 1614 by a succession of architects
including Vignola, Lunghi and Maderno.6 As the parcel was
gradually pieced together it expanded as far as the neighbouring
streets and piazza allowed, but no further. Where they twisted it
did too, and its long piazza facade, which changes direction
several times before it reaches the Tiber wing, is one of the
buildings Borromini mentions in the passage quoted above on 4. Carlo Maderno and others, Palazzo Borghese, river loggia and side
irregular streets and buildings. facade, 1560-1614.
Often Borromini had to accept irregular street boundaries in a podium, with a grand space in front for a generous view of the
facade. The reality of the matter is that most counter
passive manner, but he did so with an extraordinary feel for
patterns of movement through the building and for the reformational basilicas were built in crowded quarters, oriented
psychology of perception. For instance, in his first projects for practically by accident, with precious little space for viewing the
the Palazzo Carpegna of 1638-40,7 he proposed a scheme in which facade. In ideal theory the piazza came first, but in practice it
the irregularity of the trapezoidal site would be minimised or soon usually came last, and there grew up a simple vocabulary of
forgotten by the spectator walking through the palace (fig. 5). spaces thought appropriate for carving out from the dense urban
Columns, niches, a grand oval courtyard, and subtle shifts in axis fabric in front of a finished facade. The simplest is the square,
are used to conceal the problems of the site and create the one side based exactly on the width of the facade (fig. 6). A
impression of complete interior symmetry and unity. Palladio and slightly more complex variant is the rectangle, made up of the
Scamozzi had proposed ways of dealing with these problems that original square plus the width of a street (or fictive street) added
have the stiffness of a textbook; Borromini approaches them with on either side, such as appears on a drawing of 1627 for a piazza
the subtlety of a psychologist trained amidst the remains of in front of S. Maria in Vallicella (fig. 7). Piazzas not only have
Hadrian's Villa. practical functions but are also gestures of deference and marks
Most buildings passively adapt, but some took an active stance of honour to important images and to what they represent.
to their environment and shaped space around themselves. Sometimes an architect could shape space not by carrying out a
Church facades are obviously the most important agents of space piazza project, but simply by creating an image, one to which
shaping and urban change. Alberti and Palladio had urged that deference would eventually have to be offered in the shape of a
churches be put on the major piazzas of a city, elevated on a piazza built by future planners. In 1637 Borromini added, almost
7. Rectangular project for the Piazza di S. Maria in Vallicella, 1627.
6. Square project for the Piazza di S. Maria in Vallicella, 1604-12.
15
8. Piazza in front of S. Maria in Vallicella and Borromini 's Oratory of the Filippini.
9. License for swapping private property (marked (Cy) for public space (marked (Dy) in front of the Oratory of
the Filippini, 1655.
gratuitously, the famous oratory facade just to the left of S.
Maria in Vallicella's older facade. The original square and
rectangle planned in previous decades suddenly became
inadequate for the new image of the 'twin facades'. Borromini
left behind no piazza project of his own, but over the years the
appropriate deference was in fact offered, in the form of a piazza
(fig. 8) that stepped back in a slightly hesitant and uncertain way
to make space in front of both facades.8
One might pause for a moment and ask how a private patron or
an institution could shape public space. The answer is through the
device of 'swapping' private for public land. No private patron or
institution could take over public land and build on it, even in
minute quantities. On the other hand permission was frequently
granted to straighten out a ragged edge of property by tearing
down existing buildings and drawing a new property line. Some of
the owner's property would be given to the city and left unbuilt,
while some city property would be included in the new parcel (fig.
9). The city was satisfied as long as the amount in the public 10. Sangallo, Palazzo Baldassini, 11. Sangallo, Palazzo Farnese
1516-17. seen from Via Monserrato, street
domain increased after each such transaction. But the owner was
widened in 1541.
satisfied too, since he was allowed to adjust the shape of his
property and even of neighbouring properties. The amount of
public space grew, but so did the patterns of deference that
private patrons were able to impose on the alignment of streets
and facades.
Some examples of the active way in which secular buildings (as
opposed to churches) might shape space were discovered by
Christoph Frommel in his work on Roman Renaissance palaces.9
For instance, when the Palazzo Baldassini was begun in about
1516-17 by Antonio da Sangallo, the street on which it stood was
widened a small amount, about 2.20 meters, for a short stretch
just before the palace facade (fig. 10). The result was that the
powerful rusticated corner gave the appearance of protruding out
into the street and dominating it. The fact seems to have been an
increase in the amount of public land, but the image was one of
expropriation of public space and therefore of unbridled baronial
power. Something similar happened when the Palazzo Farnese
facade and piazza (begun 1535) were nearing completion in 1541. 12. G.L. Bernini, Palazzo 13. Palazzo Ludovisi-Maffei
The neighbouring Via di Monserrato was widened by the Ludovisi-Montecitorio, corner Marescotti seen from the Via
demolition and reconstruction of a neighbouring house, re seen from the west. dell*A reo delta Ciambella,
erected on a setback line, so that the palace corner gives the opened by G. de'Vecchi in 1621.
impression of jutting out into the street and dominating it (fig.
11). The Pope wanted to create a line of sight from the corner
window of the palace as far as the distant intersection known as
the Chiavica di S. Lucia, but the project remained incomplete and
the image that remained embedded in the street pattern was one of
planned and purposeful irregularity. The image seems to have
been picked up in the 17th century and used as a kind of
urbanistic compliment to many major palace corners. At some
uncertain date the buildings to the west of Bernini's Palazzo
Ludovisi, later Palazzo Montecitorio, were apparently set back to
create the impression of a powerful jutting corner, a spatial image
beautifully underscored by the rustication of the corner (fig. 12).
In 162110 a street known as the Via dell'Arco della Ciambella was
opened up through the centre of the Baths of Agrippa by the
architect Gaspare de'Vecchi, working for the Ludovisi family.11
As a result the corner of the palace the family had just purchased
AA FILES no.2 17
(usually known as the Palazzo Maffei-Marescotti) gave the
appearance of protruding out into the new street and blocking its
course (fig. 13).
Some buildings react passively to their irregular sites, others
actively change the contours of the streets and buildings around
them, while a third class mixes passive adaption with active
change. This third class includes many of the large counter
reformational institutions that took many decades to construct
and that grew more powerful as time passed. The earliest plans
for these buildings usually show passive acceptance of the
irregular site. At some later stage the institution, conscious of its
wealth and power, actively reshapes its environment and opens up
streets and piazzas around its facades and corners. This cycle
from passive to active can be seen in the growth of the enormous
Collegio Romano of the Jesuits between 1560, when it was begun
with a hesitant plan that accepted many of the irregularities of the
area, and 1627, when the college was finished and the church of S.
Ignazio begun. By this time the Jesuits were used to opening up
new streets and setting back neighbouring facades to enhance the
powerful corners of their building. Here the cycle ends with
metaphor. The tiny and ingenious Piazza S. Ignazio (fig. 14),
designed by the Neapolitan architect Filippo Raguzzini and
carried out between 1727 and 1736, can be viewed as a metaphor
for many of the facets of vernacular Roman urbanism: the
dramatic meeting of projecting cornices across public streets, the
carving out of public space by institutions, and the forking street
system of the old city, which the new piazza recapitulates in
miniature and abbreviated form.12
We are still left with the question of how a great architect like
Borromini fits into the patterns of Roman urbanism. The answer
seems to be that he is an urbanist of images. Some of the images
are rather pictorial in character, while others are drawn from the
14. Filippo Raguzzini, Piazza S. Ignazio, detail, 1727-36. more abstract and more strictly architectural vocabulary of motifs
that had accumulated in the course of a century or more of active,
space-shaping urbanism. His pictorial imagery is best illustrated
in the Palazzo Pamphilj in Piazza Navona, particularly the
Pamphilj Gallery and its pendant on the right side of S. Agnese
(fig. 15). As Rudolf Preimesberger has shown in his important
study of the fresco cycles inside the palace, the gallery facade
must be understood as a benediction loggia (with the unusual
motif of the arcuated lintel) set over a high rusticated base.13 The
visual sources of the image are to be found in Raphael's fresco of
the Fire in the Borgo in the Vatican Stanze, where a similar loggia
is shown as part of the 9th-century Vatican palace, and in the
arcuated lintels of late-antique imperial imagery, such as could be
found on consular diptychs with scenes of the imperial
representatives presiding over circus games (fig. 16). The point of
this kind of imagery becomes clear when one considers the Pope's
wish, expressed toward the end of his life but apparently there all
along, to move the whole apparatus of papal administration from
the Vatican to Piazza Navona, and to make his family palace into
the core of a new Vatican on a reconstructed antique circus.
Borromini's more abstract imagery of urbanism can be seen by
studying the great institutional building of his late career, the
Propaganda Fide, which he directed from 1652 until his death in
1667.14 In urban terms the Propaganda can be seen as a duel
18 AA FILES no.2
15. Borromini, gallery facade of the Palazzo Pamphilj in Piazza Navona, 1646.
19
17. Borromini, facade of the Propaganda Fide, seen from the Via delta Vite, 1660-66.
between Borromini and his former colleague, but present rival, symbols onto their buildings in their expression of mutual
Bernini. Bernini had actually begun the rebuilding in 1634-44, contempt. Finally it seems that it was Borromini who had the last
with a small oval chapel and a new facade facing the Piazza di word, when he expanded his new chapel facade so that the last
Spagna. The facade protruded out beyond the cross-street, the bay seems to jut out into the path of the neighbouring street, the
Via Frattina, in what by now seems the normal gesture of Via della Vite, and to give the impression of blocking it in a grand
precedence and deference. When Borromini took over he began to and baronial way (fig. 17). In fact the actual paths of the local
urge demolishing Bernini's chapel under Bernini's very eyes, since streets were not changed at all. Borromini's statement is in the
the sculptor in fact lived across the street from the Propaganda. tradition of the Baldassini, the Farnese, the Ludovisi and many
To make matters worse, one Borromini project envisages taking others who engineered prominent corners for their palaces, but it
Bernini's large garden and expropriating it for the sake of a public is carried out entirely in the realm of image and metaphor.
piazza in front of the new wings of the Propaganda. In 1655, after Many other projects and buildings of Borromini could be
a favourable change of popes, Bernini counterattacked, with a examined from the same point of view, but the main point is clear
plan to rebuild his house and build an extension over the garden, enough. He spoke a subtle language of urbanism that drew on the
in the process moving his property line and stealing a bit of vernacular language of shapes and spaces that had grown up in
deference from the corner of Borromini's Propaganda. The two the course of a century and more of private and institutional
great artists seem to have carried the battle over into the realm of urbanism. Much of what he had to say he said metaphorically,
sculptural imagery, carving asses' ears and possibly even phallic without actually opening up grand new piazzas or straight new
20 AA FILES no.2
streets. He was able to draw on a repertoire of images that came
from Renaissance art and from contemporary archeology. But
possibly a more important point of reference was the codes of
honour and patterns of deference built into the courtier society in
which he lived. The buildings of baroque Rome claim or concede
precedence to one another in much the same way that the
courtiers and princes of the day claimed or conceded it to each
other as they rode through the city or as they walked through its
palaces. The courtiers are gone, but the value system they held is
still preserved in the fabric of Rome's streets.
Notes
1. Untitled and unpaginated MS guidebook to Rome of about 1675 in Avery
Library, Columbia University.
2. Some key studies of Roman urbanism are: Christoph Frommel, Der R?mische
Palastbau der Hochrenaissance, T?bingen, 1973, Vol. I, pp. 11-24 ('Palastbau
und Urbanistik im Rom der Hochrenaissance', a chapter which is fundamental
to the methodology of this study); idem, 'II Palazzo dei Tribunali in Via
Giulia', Studi Bramanteschi, Rome, 1970, pp.523-534; Arnaldo Bruschi,
Bramante, London, 1977, pp. 115-127 (Via Giulia); James Ackerman, The
Architecture of Michelangelo, Vol. I, London and New York, 1961, pp.54-74
(the Capitoline Hill); Jean Delumeau, Vie economique et sociale de Rome dans
la seconde moitie du XVIe siecle, Vol. I, Paris, 1957 (on Sixtus V); Howard
Hibbard, Carlo Maderno and Roman Architecture 1580-1630, London, 1971
(architecture and society in early baroque Rome); Heinrich Brauer and Rudolf
Wittkower, Die Zeichnungen des Gianlorenzo Bernini, Berlin, 1931, pp.62-104
(Piazza S. Pietro); T. Kaori Kitao, Cirle and Oval in the Square of Saint
Peter's, New York, 1974; Angela Guidoni Marino, 'II colonnato di piazza S.
Pietro: dall'architettura obliqua di Caramuel al "classicismo" berniniano',
Palladio, XXIII, 1973, pp.81-120.
3. Francesco Borromini (and Virgilio Spada), Opus Architectonicum, Rome,
1725, chapter 2.
4. Frommel, Palastbau, Vol. Ill, pp.30-38.
5. Frommel, Palastbau, Vol. I, pp. 18-20.
6. Howard Hibbard, The Architecture of the Palazzo Borghese, Rome, 1962.
7. Anthony Blunt, Borromini, London, 1979, pp. 161-169; Paolo Portoghesi, The
Rome of Borromini: Architecture as Language, New York, 1968, figs, xc-xciv.
8. Joseph Connors, Borromini and the Roman Oratory: Style and Society,
Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1980, pp.81-93.
9. Frommel, Palastbau, Vol. 1, pp. 18-24.
10. Allan Braham and Hellmut Hager, Carlo Fontana. The Drawings at Windsor
Castle, London, 1977, pp. 112-125; and Montecitorio: Ricerche di Storia
Urbana, ed. Franco Borsi and others, Rome, 1972.
11. Unpublished chirograph of 1621 in the Vatican. The street is shown in Ernest
Nash, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome, London, 1968, Vol. II,
pp.429-433.
12. Connors, Borromini and the Roman Oratory, pp.81-83 and figs. 108-110;
Dorothy Metzger Habel, 'Piazza S. Ignazio, Rome, in the 17th and 18th
Centuries', Architectura, XI, 1981, pp.31-65, based on the same author's (then
Dorothy Metzger) Ph.D dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
1977.
13. Rudolf Preimesberger, 'Pontifex romanus per Aeneam praesignatus. Die
Galleria Pamphilj und ihre Fresken', R?misches Jahrbuch f?r Kunst?
geschichte, XVI, 1976, pp.221-288; and also idem, 'Obeliscus Pamphilius.
Beitr?ge zu Vorgeschichte und Ikonographie des Vierstr?mbrunnens auf
Piazza Navona', M?nchner Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst, XXV, 1974,
pp.77-162.
14. The latest monograph is Giovanni Antonazzi, // Palazzo di Propaganda,
Rome, 1979.
21

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BORROMINI AND ROMAN URBANISM

Author(s): Joseph Connors

Architectural Association School of Architecture is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve

12 3. Antonio da Sangallo the younger, facade of the Roman mint, 1525-27.

7. Rectangular project for the Piazza di S. Maria in Vallicella, 1627.

6. Square project for the Piazza di S. Maria in Vallicella, 1604-12.

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