ancient cities

106 Capital City
Table 1 Europe’s 10 Largest Cities in 1750
(population × 1,000)
1. London 676
2. Paris 560
3. Naples 324
4. Amsterdam 219
5. Lisbon 213
6. Vienna 169
7. Moscow 161
8. Venice 158
9. Rome 157
10. St. Petersburg 138
scenography offering broad vistas on statues,
noble palaces, or impressive art galleries. Their
flanks were kept sober and stern so as to not distract
the eyes of the visitor from the monument in
the distance. Classicist architecture, with its
emphasis on symmetry and proportion, was ideally
suited for that aim. The resulting cityscape
impressed people as truly monumental. The
orthogonal layout testified to the ruler’s will
imposed on what previously was an irregular
agrarian parcellation. The land was brought into
his hands by expropriation and extortion.
Saint Petersburg
No other capital demonstrated its ruler’s superiority
as newly founded Saint Petersburg in Russia
did. But opposite to Versailles or Caserta, the royal
alternatives to Paris and Naples that were also created
ex nihilo, Czar Peter the Great founded a
veritable capital. Although its location was
extremely peripheral and its marshy soil and harsh
climate were serious disadvantages, all these things
were secondary to the czar’s wish to open a window
to the West, and thus to progress and civilization.
Enormous squares and parade grounds in its
center testified to his disdain for the costs of urban
land reclaimed at great expense. The volume and
design of his palaces, built in natural stone that
had to be hauled over hundreds of miles, were
unmatched elsewhere in Europe. But even miniature
capitals like Mannheim or Nancy developed
the language of urban display and grandeur that
became the almost universal vocabulary of power
in following ages.
Amsterdam and Venice
Two cities did not fit the absolutist trend. The
size of Amsterdam and Venice was consistent with
their economic function. Politics hardly played a
role. Venice was a city-state, whereas Amsterdam
dominated the Dutch Republic (1648–1795) commercially
and financially, without, however, claiming
the title of capital, which would have been of
little value in this extremely federalist state with its
weak central government.
Both cities had to be drained constantly by a
network of canals. This required urban planning,
resulting in the unique system of waterways that is
typical of them. But individual building patrons
were left free to display their design preferences.
Opposite to the court capitals, top-down aesthetic
control was unthought of. It resulted in townscapes
that were valued as picturesque, in which
residences were conceived as individual statements
of the owners, differing from the neighbors in
building materials, volume, and design, and yet
not producing a chaotic environment.
Paris
However much admired, no one in the nineteenth
century saw the picturesque as a suitable
carrier for a capital city. For this, one needed the
elaboration of the proven techniques of the baroque
era adapted to the needs of the age. Nowhere was
such exercise more convincing than in the grands
travaux of Baron Haussmann in Paris (1853–
1870). He transformed the goût du roi into the
goût bourgeois and thus brought the taste of absolutism
to the broader public.
The visual impact of Paris’s new townscape
was considerable. The many new states founded in
nineteenth-century Europe were eager to impress
foreign visitors and their own citizens alike as
worthy members of the European community.
One way to gain respect was to develop the
national capital into the icon and the showcase
of the nation, highlighting statues of the heroes of
science, industry, culture, and the battlefield. The
“special effects” to manipulate the eyes of the visitor
to these carriers of national pride were copied
from Paris. Haussmann’s influence was also felt
outside Europe. From Buenos Aires to Cairo we
find the traces of this townscape of power, but it
was certainly not universal.