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# 68 • SEPTEMBER 21 , 2015
exactly like that.
In 1502 comes the final proclamation of
the architectural Renaissance in Rome:
The Temple of San Pietro in Montorio.
It is a temple built at the behest of King
Ferdinand of Spain, on the site where it
is believed St. Peter had been martyred,
on the Janiculum hill. The construction
is perfect, a circular from which flows
the cylindrical shape of the temple, surrounded by a single row of columns, the
whole raised three steps and closed by
a dome which proportions exactly recall
those of the Pantheon.
In the original project, all was at the center of a square courtyard with pilasters.
The result is a classical monument that
revives the in sixteenth-century Rome,
unique clear reference to the classic greatness. From this moment, for at least a
century, all the eternal city will be built
according to these laws: from Michelangelo to Raphael, from Giuliano da San
Gallo to Maderno.
Even the design for the new St. Peter’s
building refers to the ratio of the square
and of the circle, in a monumental Greek
cross plan with four other smaller Greek
crosses in recreating a square in planview, all of it surmounted by a hemispherical dome. A mausoleum, a huge mausoleum of imperial ancestry had been
proposed to the Roman church to celebrate its epicenter: Roman architecture
was about to relive his most striking revival.
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