Andrea Palladio · The Third Book
Chapter XVII. Of the Piazze of the Greeks
THE Greeks, according to Vitruvius, in the first chapter of the fifth book, or dered the piazze in their cities in a square form, and made ample and do-ble portico’s round them, consisting of many columns, that Is, one diameter and an half of 2 column distant the one from the other, or at most two diameters. These port-co's were as broad as the columns were long. Hence, as they were double, the place to walk in came to be as broad as twice the length of the column, and therefore very commodious and ample. Upon the first columns, which (with regard to the place where they were) in my opinion, must have been of the Corinthian order, there were other columns, a fourth part less than the first: these had a poggio under them, as high as conveniency required; because these upper portico’s were also made to walk in, and to discourse, and where people might conveniently be to see the spectacles that might be exhibited in the square, either out of devotion or pleasure. All these portico’s ought to be adorned with niches and statues, because the Greeks took great delight in such ornaments. Near to these piazze, although Vitruvius, when he teaches how they were ordered, does not make mention of those places, there ought to be the basilica, the curia, the prisons, and all the other places usually joined to piazza’s, of which mention has been made before, Besides which (as he says in the seventh chapter of the first book) the antients used to make near the piazze, the temples consecrated to Mercury and Isis, as to Gods presiding over business and merchandie: and in Pola, a city of Ifiria, two are to seen upon the piazze; the one like the other, for form, grandeur, and for ornaments. I have drawn them in the design of these piazze on one side of the basilica. The plan and elevation of which, with all their particular members, shall be seen more distinctly in my book of temples.
u D, The
piazza.: 13. THE elevation that follows the plan, is of one part of the piazza.
Public-domain text (London, published by Isaac Ware, 1738). Read from the Internet Archive’s scan (gri_33125011569684) of the copy in the Getty Research Institute, by way of Wikimedia Commons, where it is marked public domain. That scan’s text layer had lost the ends of the lines on every left-hand page, so the pages were read again from the scan’s images, the two readings compared word by word, and the text cleaned: the long s (ſ) is printed s and the ct and st ligatures as plain letters, words broken at the ends of lines are joined, and running heads, page numbers, signatures and catchwords are removed. Ware’s spelling, capitals and punctuation are otherwise kept (shew, publick, antient, compleat). Chapter titles and words the OCR misread were corrected against the page images. Some misreadings will remain, most of them in the italic prefaces and the Latin of Book III. Ware’s dedication, the list of subscribers, his table of terms, the errata and the bookseller’s advertisement are not reproduced. Nor are the 212 engraved plates, their inscriptions, or the keys to the letters on them that Ware prints in the text: where Palladio writes “as in the design” the figure is in the printed book.