Pienza: The Creation of a Renaissance City

Pienza: The Creation of a Renaissance City by MacK, Charles R.. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780801416996.

Pienza, a small hill town in north central Italy, represents one of the major architectural masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. Starting in 1459, under the sponsorship of Pope Pius II, it was rebuilt into a model Renaissance cityscape. Because its physical state has changed only slightly since the fifteenth century, Pienza offers us a unique opportunity to see a variety of building traditions and theoretical positions combined in an almost perfectly preserved urban environment.