Make the stair of a palace a processional space: one broad flight rising to a landing, then turning back in two flights either side to arrive at the principal floor beneath a single great vault.
Water for the new quarters
Bring water back to the high, empty parts of the city by aqueduct; let it arrive at a monumental fountain and feed public fountains at the crossings of the new streets, so that people will come to live there.
Since the aqueducts had been cut in late antiquity, the Roman hills had emptied and the population had crowded into the bend of the Tiber. Sixtus V’s Acqua Felice (1585–87) brought water to the Quirinal, Viminal and Esquiline, and ended in Fontana’s Moses fountain, a triumphal arch of three bays with the water pouring from its openings. At the crossing of the Strada Felice with the Strada Pia four fountains were built into the cut-off corners of the buildings (1588–93). From that crossing four long vistas open, one of them down the Strada Felice to the obelisk of Santa Maria Maggiore.
Related rules
Organise the whole garden on one axis from the centre of the house to the horizon; lay out the parts symmetrically about it, and use water, slopes and hidden changes of level so that the view along it reveals the garden by stages.
Run the principal streets straight from the central square to the gates, so that every gate is visible from the centre and every quarter lies on a direct route to it; set secondary squares along the radials.
Give a fortified town a polygonal wall with an angled bastion at every corner, so that each face of every bastion and every stretch of curtain wall can be swept by fire from its neighbours.
Palmanova: a nine-sided trace with nine bastions and three gates
Break the slope of the roof on all four sides: a steep lower slope, nearly a wall, which holds a storey of rooms lit by dormers, and a shallow upper slope, often invisible from the street.
lower slope ≈ 60–75° · upper slope ≈ 15–30°
Give a new city a regular polygonal outline with a bastion at every angle, put the principal piazza at the centre with the chief church and the seat of government on it, and distribute lesser squares for the markets through the quarters.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Water for the new quarters”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/sixtine-fountains. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.