Beyond Typologies: Early Modern Italian Town Halls in Comparative Perspective (14th-17th Centuries)

By challenging the traditional, typological, approach to the history of town halls, we aim to place Italian civic architecture at the center of a cross-disciplinary study focused, on one hand, on the uses and functions of these buildings, and on the other, on their cultural and identity meanings. The papers gathered in this special collection do not present a history of architectural models and persistencies, but rather one of continuous transformations, conversions, and adaptations, shaped by the material and symbolic functions that public buildings fulfilled, and often continue to fulfill, in the places where they were built.