Longhena and the Salute: a church as a votive offering
An octagonal plan, a tall dome held by giant scrolls, a million piles beneath the water. The Salute is Venice's answer to the plague of 1630, and the masterpiece of Baldassare Longhena, who did not see it finished.
Christopher Wren: an astronomer rebuilds London
Wren's plan for London is not carried out. His dome for St Paul's, three shells in one, is: 111 metres, a cathedral built in 35 years by an architect who was born an astronomer.
Bernini versus Borromini: the same Rome, two universes
Born one year apart, died thirteen years apart. Bernini won in life. Borromini won in history.
Guarini: the mathematician who built vertigo
The pierced domes of Turin: the Chapel of the Shroud makes you dizzy because it is designed to do so. Architecture as a built theorem.
Versailles: the palace as the State
Louis XIV moved the court to Versailles in 1682. Not for comfort — for political control. The nobility under surveillance around the clock.
St. Peter's Square: the colonnade as an embrace
Bernini says the oval colonnade exists because the Church opens its arms to the faithful. But there is also a technical reason: it hides the fact that the facade is too wide.
San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane: Borromini and impossible space
Borromini builds San Carlo on a plot that would fit entirely within a single pier of St. Peter's. He does not despair: he geometrizes.
Fischer von Erlach: Viennese Imperial Baroque
Vienna, 1713. Emperor Charles VI vows to build a church to the Virgin Mary if the city survives the plague.
Il Gesù: the church that changed everything
The Church of the Gesù in Rome (1568): Vignola's single-nave compromise for Jesuit preaching, its Baroque interior and the plan copied by missions worldwide.
Piazza Navona: the urban theater
Rome, 1651. Pope Innocent X commissions Gian Lorenzo Bernini to build the Fountain of the Four Rivers for the center of Piazza Navona.
Sixtus V's Rome: the urban plan
1585. Felice Peretti becomes pope under the name Sixtus V and has five years left to live.
The Stupinigi Hunting Lodge: Juvarra and Turin Baroque
1729. Filippo Juvara — Sicilian by birth, Roman by training, Turinese by adoption — designs a hunting residence outside Turin for the King of Sardinia…
Frequently asked questions
What sets Baroque architecture apart from the Renaissance?
The Baroque inherits the Renaissance's classical vocabulary — columns, pediments, proportion — but uses it to produce movement and tension instead of static balance: curved surfaces, dramatic light effects, spaces that expand toward the viewer. It's an architecture built to persuade and move, consistent with the Catholic Church's role during the Counter-Reformation.
Why were Bernini and Borromini rivals?
They worked side by side at St. Peter's and on numerous Roman building sites of the seventeenth century with opposite temperaments and visions — Bernini theatrical and courtly, Borromini geometric and tormented — and the rivalry is documented in period accounts of what each said about the other, not just later legend.
What was Pope Sixtus V's urban plan for Rome?
In just five years as pope (1585-1590), Sixtus V and his architect Domenico Fontana built 27 km of new streets and erected 4 obelisks as visual landmarks linking the major basilicas — St. Peter's, St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major, Piazza del Popolo — turning pilgrimage on foot into an urban wayfinding system legible from a distance.
What is the Palazzina di Stupinigi and who designed it?
It's the hunting lodge built from 1729 by Filippo Juvara — Sicilian by birth, Roman by training, Turinese by adoption — for King Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia, outside Turin. It represents the height of Piedmontese Baroque, with a Saint Andrew's cross plan organizing the pavilions around the central hall.