Rules · Cities · Plans · Façades
In a great and powerful city make the main streets broad and straight, lined with porticoes and with houses of the same height and design, so that the street itself becomes an ornament; in a small town let the streets wind instead.
Alberti gives both options and says when each is right. Broad straight streets suit the dignity and the traffic of a capital. A small town or a fortress is better served by streets that curve gently like a river: the town looks larger, each step reveals a new façade, every house gets some sun and shade, winds are broken, and an enemy who breaks in is lost. When he describes the ornaments of streets he asks for porticoes of equal line and houses of equal height along them.
Sforzinda is a capital, so its radial streets run straight from the piazza to the gates, their first stretches lined with arcaded houses of one pattern.
Lift the dome on a cylindrical or polygonal drum pierced with windows between the ring of the pendentives and the springing of the dome, to light the centre of the church and to make the dome visible from afar.
drum height ≈ ⅓–1 × its radius (Byzantine); much taller in Russian churches
Give the villa garden porticoes for sun and for shade, grottoes made in imitation of nature with tufa and shells, evergreens planted in straight rows at equal distances, and hedges of box; set vines on columns over the walks.
Lay the ideal garden out on a circular plan in concentric rings, woods outside, then meadows and orchards, then gardens of knots and clipped evergreens divided by walks, with water and the fountain of the goddess at the centre.
When orders are placed one above another, put the stronger below and the more delicate above (Doric under Ionic under Corinthian), and make each upper column a quarter shorter than the one beneath.
upper column = ¾ lower column; order sequence: Tuscan → Doric → Ionic → Corinthian → Composite
Set arches on piers and frame each bay with an engaged column or pilaster carrying a continuous entablature, so that the arch does the work and the order gives the measure.
arch height ≈ 2 × arch width (Vignola); impost at ⅔ of the column
Proportion rooms and façades by the same ratios that make musical consonances: 1:2 (octave), 2:3 (fifth), 3:4 (fourth), and their compounds.
short plans 1:1, 2:3, 3:4 · medium 1:2, 4:9, 9:16 · long 1:3, 3:8, 1:4
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Straight streets of equal houses”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/alberti-uniform-streets. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.