Political Portico: Exhibiting Self-Rule in Early Communal Italy

Abstract

The city-states of the communal period in Italy (ca. 1080–1380) produced the first republican governing bodies in Europe since the fall of the Roman Republic; they also fashioned public squares studded with an unprecedented array of porticoed architecture. Pressured by external and internal forces critical of collective rule, urban nobles and elite citizens sought to legitimize their novel institutions and actualize their participatory ideology. An examination of texts, pictorial works, and architectural form reveals that communes deployed porticoes innovatively to promote radical civic values by showcasing performances of self-governance for public consumption.