File:A history of architecture in Italy from the time of Constantine to the dawn of the renaissance (1901) (14597831460).jpg

Identifier: historyofarchit02cumm (find matches)
Title: A history of architecture in Italy from the time of Constantine to the dawn of the renaissance
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Cummings, Charles Amos, 1833-1905
Subjects: Architecture
Publisher: Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin and company
Contributing Library: PIMS - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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led them to defy theefforts of the citizens to resist their constant outrages, and the streets of 1 Perrens, JLa Civilisation Florentine, p. 21; Sismondi, History of the Italian Republics. - In Lucca, about lo22, Castruccio Antelminelli began the construction of a fortress, —Rocca Augusta, — in clearing- the ground for which he destroyed eleven towers besidesmany houses. Mothes, p. 782. Mothes (p. 426 note) cites five Italian authorities who estimate the number of towersin Pisa, in 1120, at ten, fifteen, and sixteen thousand. This is, of course, absurd, sincethere is no reason to suppose that the population of Pisa ever exceeded that of Florence,which is believed never to have passed one hundred thousand. A more reasonableground for estimate is in the allusions of contemporary eleventh-century chroniclers whospeak of one hundred and fifty towers of citizens in Florence, of one hundred and fifty-nine in Ascoli, of more than one hundred in Padua, etc., etc. In them, also, we read of
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Fig. 391. Brescia. Torre della Pallata. 236 ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY every Italian city were the scene of continual broils and skirmishes.The pages of Machiavelli teem with riot and bloodshed. The distracted burghers found themselves again forced to abate an intolera-ble nuisance by restricting the height and number of the towers.In Florence, Bologna, Pistoia, Verona, Genoa, laws of this kindwere enacted. Florence in 1250 decreed that the height of all towersshould be reduced to fifty braccia (about one hundred feet), and the material thus removed be usedin building an embankment onthe south side of the Arno. InPistoia the podesta was obligedto take an oath to allow notower to be built in the city orsuburbs higher than the tower ofthe sons of Hildebrand Vandini.^Few examples remain in Italyof these half military and halfdomestic towers. The most famil-iar are the two neighboring lean-ing towers of Bologna known asthe Asinelli and Garisenda, dat-ing from the beginning of thetwelfth centur

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