THE ART OF NUMBER

Geometry in Rome from the Renaissance to the Middle Ages

There is a hidden geometry in the city that follows neither street alignments nor property boundaries: it is the geometry that architects deliberately inscribed in plans, proportions and floors — as argument about the cosmos, not as ornament. This itinerary traces in six stops the places where that geometry is still legible. From the golden section of Villa Farnesina to the Borrominian spirals of Sant'Ivo and San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, from the Cosmatesque floors of Santa Maria in Cosmedin to the three superimposed levels of San Clemente: each stop is a different answer to the same question — if mathematics is the language in which the world is written, how does one build a space that demonstrates it.