The Plaza Mayor and the Shaping of Baroque Madrid

Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-0-521-81507-9
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 376 Seiten, Format (B × H): 183 mm x 260 mm, Gewicht: 1035 g

The Plaza Mayor and the Shaping of Baroque Madrid examines the transformation of Madrid from a secondary market town to the capital of the worldwide, Spanish Habsburg empire. Focusing on the planning and building of Madrid's principal public monument, the Plaza Mayor, it is based on analysis of archival documents, architectural drawings, as well as the surviving built fabric of the city itself. In this 2003 book, Jesús Escobar demonstrates how the shaping of the city square and its environs reflects the bureaucratic nature of government in Madrid chosen in 1561 to serve as a capital of Spain. He also examines the careful planning of the city, with particular regard to how the necessities of housing and public works that accompanied its new capital status were accommodated. The process reveals the sophistication of town planning in late sixteenth-century Spain and forces a reconsideration of Spanish urbanism within the contexts of contemporary European and Spanish colonial developments.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Escobar, Jesus

Escobar, Jesús

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Architekturtheorie
• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Architektur: Berufspraxis
• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Architektur: Allgemeines

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Madrid, town and court; 2. Architecture and bureaucracy; 3. Sixteenth-century initiatives; 4. The panadería and its impact; 5. Seventeenth-century reforms; 6. The plaza mayor as political symbol.

Über Autor(innen)

Escobar, Jesús
Jesús Escobar is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at Northwestern University and a specialist in the art, architecture, and urbanism of early modern Spain, Italy, and the Spanish world. His book The Plaza Mayor and the Shaping of Baroque Madrid won the Eleanor Tufts Award from the American Society for Hispanic Art Historical Studies and has been revised in a Spanish-language edition (Editorial Nerea, 2008). He is currently at work on a book project that examines architectural and urban interventions in seventeenth-century Madrid from a local and transatlantic perspective.