| In the one hundred years between 1196 and 1296, the mid-sized Lombard city of Parma transformed its urban core according to rational, geometric principles as early as 1196. In the first part of the dissertation, I analyze the thirteenth-century development of the two most important public spaces within Parma, the piazzas now known as Piazza del Duomo (the cathedral square) and Piazza Garibaldi (the communal square). By closely reading Parma's surviving medieval fabric, contemporary chronicles, contracts, and the extant legislation of the commune, I establish the building history of both squares, reconstruct their period appearance, and interpret their form. I conclude that both the episcopal and communal squares are carefully-crafted urbanistic ensembles pervaded by geometric order and animated by the desire to produce panoptic, panoramic vistas of the major monuments defining the sites' perimeters. Furthermore, by closely analyzing the formal qualities that produce these effects, I demonstrate that Parma's Piazza del Duomo is one of the earliest examples of rational urban planning thus far identified in medieval Italy.; In Parma, as in all of north Italy, continual warfare and civil unrest scarred life in the thirteenth-century. The city's political history in this period is marked by the constant desire to achieve a mode of governance capable of imposing order on this tumult. In the second part of the dissertation, I document how order---both physical and social---was established within and around the cathedral and communal squares and explore the two squares' roles as stages for civic ritual. The panoptic qualities of the two piazzas facilitated both the surveillance demanded by social order and the civic spectacles of the commune. Finally, I propose that factions within Parma's oligarchy visually asserted their authority within the city by imposing order on the irregular features of these key sites. The orderly and harmonious squares were architectural and urbanistic metaphors for the orderly rule of the oligarchs, and the harmonious society they sought---but ultimately failed---to establish. |
