THE CONFIDENCE of Venetian Renaissance art and architecture may seem oddly at variance with the political imperatives that confronted the republic. The subtle reports of her ambassadors imply one aspect of the prodigious efforts that were necessary to secure the interests of La Serenissima. But the role of the military was even more important. Far more was spent on fortifications throughout Venice’s territories than on religious or civic buildings: the carved maps of some of these on the façade of Santa Maria del Giglio at Venice must have served as an uncomfortable reminder of republican responsibilities. That Venice’s empire could only be maintained at considerable cost is obvious, for example, in the great fortress at Famagusta on Cyprus. Nearer to hand, some twenty kilometres east of Udine, is Palmanova, one of the most complete monuments of late sixteenth-century military architecture and, not insignificantly, one of the few places in the republic that early seventeenth-century visitors on what was later to be termed the Grand Tour chose to see.
The threats posed by both the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottomans meant that it became necessary to reconsider the defence of the Venetian terra firma, and in 1593 the decision was taken to erect a fortress on the site of the town of Palmada, under the control of Giulio Savorgnan and with the assistance of a number of architects including Scamozzi. Palma, as the place was renamed, was a state of the art proposition, embodying the most up to date views about defence. The fortress, on which work continued for some twenty years, takes the form of a star with nine points. There are three gates opening to straight streets that end in alternate sides of the central hexagonal Piazza Grande; subsidiary streets radiate from the remaining sides.
Vincenzo Scamozzi, the Porta Aquileia (top) and the Porta Cividale.
Planting a garrison proved easier than establishing a self-sufficient town, and even now the piazza with its statuary and inscriptions has a somewhat theatrical air. The main buildings are the Duomo and the Palazzo dei Provveditori Generali, the former like the three gates by Scamozzi. But it is not for its individual components that Palma, or Palmanova as it was renamed in 1807, is remarkable. It is as a whole – albeit one that was reinforced with additional bastions in the late seventeenth century, and with an outer circuit of these under Napoleon – that Palmanova is unique. The evident strength of the defences makes it seem the more ironical that the most delicate Venetian draftsman of his generation, Giuseppe Bernardino Bison, was born there in 1762.