Fortified Ideal City

Pearls of fortress construction art

Of military architects and engineers of absolutist princes in the Renaissance planned military city with star shaped or chessboard-like geometry of the roads and the surrounding fortress buildings. (e.g. Palmanova, IT, see above)

The planning and new installation of high walled cities with strict geometric ground plans belongs to the most extraordinary accomplishments of military strategists from the 16th to 18th century. They connected the often by the Romans used regular / ideal geometries of cities with the modern bastion system to form a highly effective city fortification.

Whether aligned in a star-shaped layout such as Renaissance cities like Palmanova (I) and Neuf Brisach (F) or in a rectangular layout like the cities Terezin (CZ), Zamosc (P) or Valetta (Malta) – all these cities follow the same rules: the barracks are located in the outermost regions whereas a big square forms the city center where the civil and military command were stationed.

The Fortified Ideal City unified the military with all necessary civil crafts and other services in the most effective way. Streets as straight as a die convey the harmony of the overall structure. Their distinctive viewing angles, silhouettes in proper style and often well-preserved defensive systems represent an impressive synthesis of fortress construction art until today. These wonderful regular installations with an exceptional cityscape are literally ‘stars’ of fortress architecture. Many of them belong to the UNESCO World Heritage.