Architecture of Territorialisation. Public Buildings in the Eastern Adriatic (1400-1800)

This volume investigates public buildings on the eastern Adriatic, a region at the crossroads of various powers in the late medieval and early modern periods. While the area was dotted with old autonomous communes, local self-rule gave way to central consolidation during this period, making it exemplary in the study of European political-administrative evolution. In these territorialisation processes, public architectural and infrastructural commissions by local and state patrons played a central role, producing interconnected systems and politicised urban spaces.

Through eighteen interdisciplinary chapters, ranging from region-wide thematic surveys to specific case studies, this book explores the multifaceted roles of public buildings in the emergence of homogenised territories. To that aim, it considers not only loggias and administrative palaces, but also prisons, cisterns, ports, hospitals, salt and grain depots, citadels, arsenals, and other markers of political, economic, and military consolidation and control between the old and the new, the local and the regional, and the state. By analysing architecture and infrastructure as means of territorialisation, this study not only illuminates that subject in the regions in question but also highlights similar visual, statewide consolidation practices in Central, Southern, and South-East Europe that have shaped the European cultural landscape we inherit.