This city was designed by artist and architect Vincenzo Scamozzi. Palmanova is probably the most perfect city on the planet.
Designed strategically, for defense, and one of the most interesting cities you will ever visit.
Palmanova is a town and comune in northeastern Italy, close to the border with Slovenia.
The entire town of Palmanova is famous for its concentric citadel or fortress plan and structure, called a star fort, imitated in the Modern era by numerous military architects. It consists of three rings, which were built in stages. First circle with a circumference of 7 km were built in 1593, its construction took 30 years. The second phase of construction took place between 1658-1690. Between 1806 and 1813 were performed last works. The fortress consists of: 9 ravelins, 9 bastions, 9 lunettes, 18 cavaliers.
American professor Edward Wallace Muir Jr. said on Palmanova: “The humanist theorists of the ideal city designed numerous planned cities that look intriguing on paper but were not especially successful as livable spaces. Along the northeastern frontier of their mainland empire, the Venetians began to build in 1593 the best example of a Renaissance planned town: Palmanova, a fortress city designed to defend against attacks from the Ottomans in Bosnia. Built ex nihilo according to humanist and military specifications, Palmanova was supposed to be inhabited by self-sustaining merchants, craftsmen, and farmers. However, despite the pristine conditions and elegant layout of the new city, no one chose to move there, and by 1622 Venice was forced to pardon criminals and offer them free building lots and materials if they would agree to settle the town. Thus began the forced settlement of this magnificent planned space, which remains lifeless to this day and is visited only by curious scholars of Renaissance cities and bored soldiers who are still posted there to guard the Italian frontier.”
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