Urban Design and Architecture of Power in Imola during the Signoria of Girolamo Riario (1973-1488)

In 1473 the Pope Sisto IV according with Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, gave the dominio on the Romagnol city of Imola and its territory to the young nephew count Girolamo Riario (1443 ca. – 1488) wedding Caterina Sforza daughter of the Duke. The acquisition of the Signoria upon Imola constituted for Girolamo Riario the first step toward the organisation of a new Principato. Someone had noticed that count Girolamo’s career «prefigure that of the more illustrious Cesare Borgia». The state was enlarged in 1480 with the annexation of Forlì. During the short era of Riario’s government Imola became subject of a wide and accelerated process of urban improvement that modified the city structure. The focus of the programme of urban renovation was the Piazza Maggiore, the centre of the city. The Piazza, enlarged and regularized, had to become a place of power’s display, a tangible representation of the dignitas and power of the Princeps. Girolamo Riario, for himself and the court, converted the former Palazzo Comunale, and in the same time along the east side of the Piazza was built a long new palace with porticoes that had to contain the magistracies of the State. The renovation of the principal square of Imola, however not completely finished, was a paradigmatic and earlier case of Renaissance urban design. At the end of the Riario’s Signoria Imola appeared to be «the most wonderful city of Romagna» (Leandro Alberti). The renovation of the physical fabric of Imola was not achieved only by the Signore. Thanks the grants of Girolamo Riario some noble families and the ecclesiastical orders begun to build or reconstructed new palaces and Churches. The signoria of Girolamo Riario on Imola was connoted as a rupture with the “long last” process of evolution that until that moment governed, under the continuity of urban functions and hierarchies, the urban development. At the same time new more general peculiarity are set up concerning the urban design strategies in the moment of the transition between the medieval to modern age. Riario’s experience shows that the fracture produced by an institutional transition makes possible a decisive action of transformation of consolidated urban traditions.