Pope Sixtus V

I have a lot of things I'd like to write about from our whirlwind Thanksgiving trip to Italy a few weeks ago, and hopefully I will be getting around to doing so over the next couple of months.

In the meantime, here's one of the first items of interest I came across in Rome: a Pope who was also an urban planner.

Within the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome is the tomb of Pope Sixtus V. He is famous (or perhaps infamous) in the urban planning profession for his ”Plan for Rome,” which consisted of leveling entire neighborhoods within the city in the late 1500s in order to build wide, straight boulevards between the city’s major churches. Although these boulevards made travel through the ancient city easier, he was resented by the large number of households and businesses he displaced. 

His Baroque “urban renewal” scheme would be copied by others, notably by Haussmann in his “Renovation of Paris” in the 19th century... and arguably by American highway engineers of the mid-20th century.