Palmanova

Palmanova stands on the Friuli plain, between Udine and the Adriatic, on ground that in 1593 was open country twenty kilometers from the Habsburg border. The Venetian Republic chose the feast of Santa Giustina to found it, and built the geometry on Marcantonio Barbaro's design: nine points radiating from a six-sided center, three ring streets running concentric to the walls, ramparts angled so each point covers the one beside it. The town has no separate old and new quarter, no upper and lower half.

It is one plan, laid down whole and then filled in slowly: the piazza paved in 1602, the first ring of bastions closed in 1623, the second between 1658 and 1690, the third under a different army entirely between 1806 and 1813. Venice began the design, an emperor finished it, and the interval between the two is longer than most towns take to form by accident. The city never had to defend itself in earnest.

What was built as a machine for war became, over three centuries and two occupations, simply a shape. Everything the town now shows a visitor, the star, the gates, the ring roads, is the residue of a defense that was never used.