This book examines the urbanistic transformation of the mid-sized city of Parma, Italy, from 1196 to 1350. Although medieval Parma is not well known in Anglophone circles, the city was at the vanguard of the political and urbanistic revolution that took place in the Lombard plain during the thirteenth century. The progressive political patrons of the plain produced the most sophisticated civic spaces in Europe by combining ancient Roman and contemporary courtly forms and practices. This study of Parma's communal and cathedral squares reconstructs the city's two most important public spaces, analyzes their form and cultural significance, and demonstrates that cities in northern Italy developed monumental civic centers long before the better-known sites in central Italian Tuscany. Intriguingly, this radical redevelopment of the city's public spaces took place not in a time of peace and prosperity, but amidst war and social unrest that characterized Italy's communal age.

Areli Marina is an art historian who teaches the history of medieval and Renaissance architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she is an assistant professor affiliated with the School of Architecture, the Art History Program, and the Medieval Studies Program. She received her art-historical training at Florida State University (MA, 1996) and the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University (PhD, 2004). Fellowships and grants from the American Academy in Rome and the University of Illinois supported extensive on-site research in Italy for this project on the Italian piazza. Her scholarly work focuses on the intersection of public rhetoric, national identity, and civic art production, particularly in relation to the semiotics of architecture and urban form; the problematic historiography of the Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance styles; and the role of antiquity in medieval and Renaissance art and architecture, with particular emphasis on northern Italy.