Ideal cities and «bene ordinata res publica» in the Italian Renaissance

Abstract

Over the years of the printing of the Utopia by Thomas More, the paradigm of the bene ordinata res publica takes shape in Italian culture. It is a model both political and urbanistic, which is inspired by the neo-Platonic revival of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth century and concretized by the «new style» of Renaissance architects. The rationalization of the civitas, evident from the geometric definition of the urban plans, introduces a principle of order and measuring to which it is assigned the task to re-form and harmonize the multiple instances of a real State – naturaliter unstable, corrupt, conflictual – within the form of an achievable eutopia.