Timeless Cities: An Architect's Reflections On Renaissance Italy

by David Mayernik

For Italian city builders over the course of a thousand years, the urban realm was the great theater where their best aspirations were played out, the place where society said the most substantial things about who they were and what they longed for. In Timeless Cities , architect David Mayernik reveals how Venice, Rome, Florence, Siena, and Pienza emerged from the cultural ideas of humanism that characterized Italian society from late antiquity to the eighteenth century. Cities were literally designed to be models of the mind and images of heaven. Mayernik takes the reader on an architect's tour of these five cities and describes the cultural beliefs and ideas behind the buildings. Not only a journey into the past, Timeless Cities also explains why these city-building ideas are relevant today. Whether travelling on holiday or appreciating the art and architecture of Italy from home, Mayernik helps bring the wonder and beauty of the Italian mind and its great cities a little closer.

Genres: Architecture, History

288 pages, Hardcover

First published August 31, 2003

Reviews

[Mary Dalton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating subject -- how Renaissance architects and thinkers approached city design as a way to reflect ideas of heaven -- but the book was a very slow read.

[Audrey Chesterton · Rating 5 out of 5]

David is an expert, and he does a beautiful, poetic job of convincing us of the importance of narrative landscapes in our built environment. I would like to see this approach applied to cities outside of the narrow Catholic worldview, but perhaps that is beyond David's scope.

If you're an architect, urban designer, planner, theorist or developer, you should read this book.

[Ashley · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to read this for college. I ended up writing a paper for it. I remember hating it, but have no idea what it was even about.