centenario università di pavia, 2011

MICHAEL KIENE

Colleges, “Palaces of Wisdom” and University Buildings

in Europe before 1500

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Italy and the development of the architecture of universities

From the rise of the university in the eleventh century, educated Europeanswho made the journey known as the iter Italicum were attracted by Italy’s famousuniversities, among the oldest in the Western world. During the age of human-ism in particular, Italian communities were enlightened patrons of science andlearning. When the university of Florence was founded, as Giovanni Villani(1275/1300-1348) emphasized in his Chronicle (Nuova Cronica; before 1348,chapter I, 8), the Florentines wanted “to lure people into our city, in order to further its

fame and honour”. In contrast to other countries of Europe, however, in Italy thearchitectural heritage of colleges and universities has been almost completelyneglected.

My studies on the architecture of colleges and universities since the late1970s first focused on English and French buildings before 1500. During thefieldwork in Italy in the 1980s I discovered the rich heritage of buildings forhigher education these which has been merely forgotten and required identifi-cation and appreciation. Not a few outstanding examples, but a grid of build-ings covering the whole peninsular required investigation with the Europeancontext in mind.

Italy’s central role in the Renaissance, not only in the arts but also in the sci-ences, gave shape to a special building type, the Palazzo della Sapienza (palace ofwisdom), only rarely found elsewhere. University buildings served as centers forteaching, examinations and academic ceremonies. They came into existencefrom the end of the 15th century. Earlier foundations were often enough mobilecommunities, which, in the event of dissention, could easily migrate to othercites in so called peregrinationes academicae. Up to then universities could do so, be-cause they owned no real estate not even for teaching and conferring degrees.With few exceptions they also did not own collections of other teaching mate-rials than what could not be removed easily in chests.

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Michael Kiene

Early buildings of colleges and of universities

Already the earliest buildings, combining residential and teaching functionsembodied perfectly the ideals of humanism. At first masters and studentsrented ordinary houses for both teaching and lodging. The first purpose-builtcommon dwelling of a college foundation was the Collegio di Spagna inBologna (1365-1367).

The term ‘College’ originally denoted a form of organization, not a type ofarchitecture: originally a ‘college’ was a professional association with a chair-man elected for a limited time to manage current business. With the rise of uni-versities it acquired the additional meaning of an association of teachers (innorthern Europe) and/or students (in universities shaped on the model ofBologna).

Their buildings were called domus or domus scholarium, not collegium. In Ox-ford the term aula/hall, and in Cambridge hospitium/hostel was in use. The namecollegium, to denote the building itself, was for the first time given to Oriel Col-lege, Oxford, in 1324. Originally such foundations were content to buy existingproperty. The beginnings were really modest, e.g. (destroyed) the Collège desDix-Huit in Paris, founded in 1180 by a certain Jocius de Londoniis consistedonly one single room, a dormitory for its 18 members.

The earliest residential purpose-built college in Europe rose almost simulta-neously from the end of the 1360s onwards: the model-building of Bolognawas the Spanish College (1365-1367), in Paris the Collège de Beauvais(founded 1370), in Toulouse the Collège de Périgord (founded 1360), in Eng-land a fully developed example is New College, Oxford (1379). Everywherethese buildings are rooted in the local or national building traditions and hardlyanything is patterned on models from abroad, with one certain exception: inSpain, the founder of the (destroyed) Colegio de San Bartolomé in Salamancasent his architect to Bologna to take exact measurements of the Collegio diSpagna. Spanish college architecture thus had its starting point in this Italiancollege for Spaniards, founded by Cardinal Egidio de Albornoz (last decade ofthe 13th century - 1367).

Recent restorations at the Spanish College in Bologna and the ori-gins of college architecture in Italy

The ongoing, not yet finished restorations of the Spanish College inBologna cast new light on the architecture and the sources of design of this col-lege. They require to a certain extend a revision of previous interpretation of

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the sources used by the designers for inventing a hitherto unknown buildingtype. To make it even more important: The Collegio di Spagna served as modelfor later foundations of residential colleges in Bologna, and throughout Italy,but also for central university buildings (in particular in Bologna itself).

In 2010-2011, later additions were removed from the courtyard. The dou-ble-storied loggia court appears to have had a different layout than anywheredocumented in all the earlier photographic campaigns since the late 19th cen-tury. Floor tiles underneath the removed balustrades suggest that, originally,there have not been built-in walls at all but railings which in turn have not leftany traces.

The non original balustrades and their plastered surfaces even concealed themedieval graffiti of students and even teaching material inscribed with graffititechniques into the bricks. These discoveries confirm the proposed reconstruc-tion of a double-storied loggia, one above the other. Other ecclesiastical andsimilar secular loggia courtyards in Italy rose not earlier than a century later inthe centers of Renaissance art and architecture like Florence and Rome.

Towards the city of Bologna the Collegio di Spagna looks like a fortified cas-tle, whereas indoors the double-storied rounded arches of its porticoes repeatand transform in a new approach the porticoes of the traditional townhouses

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Figure 1 – Collegio di Spagna, ground-floor. Photo by Author.


Michael Kiene

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Figure 2 – Collegio di Spagna, east wing after restoration. Photo by Author.


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Figure 3 – Collegio di Spagna, first floor loggia. Photo by Author.

Figure 4 – Collegio di Spagna, graffito with coat-of-arms. Photo by Author.


Michael Kiene

of the Bologna. The capitals of the octagonal pillars get shaped differently onboth floors, previewing somehow the later architectural orders in architecture.The college courtyard is an early example for the flourishing of new type of hu-manist architecture, which will finally inspire the Renaissance architecture. Thecourtyard of the Spanish College is a key monument rising in a context difficultto deduce from ‘models’, but serving itself in turn as an isolated predecessor ofthe achievements of Renaissance courtyards both for cloisters and palaces.

The University Palace

University palaces were much more common in southern Europe. In the fif-teenth century Italy established the prototype for yet another new buildingtype: the central university building (palazzo universitario), for teaching.

The earliest, although scarcely documented buildings is the Sapienza

founded in Florence by Niccolò da Uzzano (1359-1431/33) for a community

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Figure 5 – Collegio di Spagna, graffito on astro-nomy. Photo by Author.


of 40-50 members. He denoted his foundation in his testament once as a house,another time as a house and college and yet another time as a college and university.

Italy’s university system was somewhat more decentralized than that ofother European countries. While in northern Europe only a few cities had uni-versities, in Italy almost every capital city was equipped with an institute ofhigher learning, located close to or, where possible, on, the central piazza im-mediately adjacent to the center of government.

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Figure 6 – Ambrogio Lorenzetti, studying in a city under the auspices of a Buon Governo.Photo by Author.


Michael Kiene

The sources indicate that any area of sufficient size was considered suitablefor teaching purposes: This might be in town halls (Bologna, Modena, Pavia,Fano), teachers’ homes, shops, or on the streets and squares of university towns.This is why the fresco of Il Buon Governo (1337-9) of Ambrogio Lorenzetti (doc-umented 1319-1347), in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena shows as an example ofthe flourishing society under the auspices of a good government, a lesson in ashop. He reports a common practice

The earliest university to be granted property for its own use was Cam-bridge, England. Under Nigel de Thornton’s foundation of 1278 the universityowned the land on which, a century later, the construction of the Old Schools,the first (now much altered) university palace in Europe, was put in hand. Theplan was for a closed rectangular court with lecture rooms, libraries, a chapeland a senior common room; there were no living-quarters as were provided bythe colleges. The north wing was build between 1350 and 1400, and the wholebuilding was completed 1474. Until 1483 the Divinity School was finished inOxford. This is approximately the same period when the enormous effortswere invested in planning and building of university palaces in Italy.

Here building committees oversaw the architecture of the new universitybuildings. Unlike England, Italy was not a unified state. Thus, from the mid-fif-

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Figure 7 – Pisa, Palazzo della Sapienza, court yard. Photo by Author.


teenth century, university architecture was the locus and means of political andaesthetic competition among cities, each of which wanted to recruit its own in-tellectual elite under its direct supervision. Thanks to this competition, Italy es-tablished an array of monumental university buildings.

In central Italy, after half a century of planning, the first Palazzo della

Sapienza rose in Pisa from 1472 to the late 1490s. It (still) incorporated livingquarters in a residential college on the second floor, while the first floor wasused for lecture halls of the university of Pisa The same combination of usesapplied in the last, sumptuous Palazzo della Sapienza, in Pistoia (1533/1534),probably built to house the university.

In the 17th century Italy turned to buildings exclusively for teaching, thepalazzi universitari. The plans of 1658-1661 for the rebuilding of the universityof Pavia submitted by the otherwise undocumented Ambrogio Pessina showthe total exclusion of dwellings for the sake of teaching halls.

Italian universities took a decidedly different turn from those of northernEurope not only with regard to building type (teaching instead of residential),but also in their layout. From 1300 to 1800 they included arcades or loggiasand often enclosed a four-sided courtyard with halls for lessons (and no resi-dential quarters any more). Astonishingly enough, Italians were not originallyinterested in university library buildings; the magnificent one of the Palazzodella Sapienza in Rome opened for the public in 1670. The universities ofthe north of Europe sometimes owned a book collection as the earliest com-mon property of the community of teachers. A library space was in needmuch earlier.

The antique tradition

The principal endeavor of university architects was to respond to icono-graphical expectations; because the universities rose in the Middle Ages, it wasnot possible to find a model of a university in antiquity, except for poetical de-scriptions of meeting places for the learned.

But architects were not necessarily poets; they needed instruction on howand what to build. There is one architectural treaty from Roman times and oneof a Renaissance builder who care about buildings used for learned meetings

In his treatise De architectura (V, 11, 1-2), Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (c. 80/70B.C. - c. 25 B.C.) included remarks on meeting places of philosophers, whichwere extended by Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) in De re ædificatoria (1452;book V, 8). From then a palace of wisdom was to be equipped with porticoes,preferably on four sides of a courtyard, for the disputations of the humanists.

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Michael Kiene

In this way the supposed antique model of a building for the learned, thepalestra, was re-evoked in the early modern university.

The large number of Italian university buildings that I discovered duringthe fieldwork spans approximately half a millennium, requiring revision of thecurrent hypothesis of the development of European higher education. Insteadof a few outstanding previously known examples, there was an extensive systemof university edifices in Italy, including some of the masterpieces of Europeanuniversity architecture. They were studied by the other European founders andserved as models for the development of this buildings times in other contexts.

Michael Kiene

Universität zu Köln

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Bibliographical note

For further reading and bibliography, pls. check: MICHAEL KEINE, Die englischen und französischen Kollegientypen. Universitätsbaukunst zwischen

Sakralisierung und Säkularisierung, dissertation, Münster, 1981; ID., Die Grundlagen der eu-

ropäischen Universitätsbaukunst, in “Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte”, 46 (1983), pp. 63-114; ID., L’architettura del Collegio di Spagna in Bologna: organizzazione dello spazio e influssi sul-

l’edilizia universitaria europea, in “Il Carrobbio”, 9 (1983), pp. 233-242; ID., Zur Bautätigkeit

in den italienischen Universitäten von der Mitte des Trecento bis zur Mitte des Quattrocento, in “Mit-teilungen des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz”, 30 (1986), pp. 433-490; ID., Der

Palazzo della Sapienza, in “Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte”, 23/24 (1988), pp.219-271; ID., Die Erneuerung der italienischen Universitätsarchitektur unter Carlo und Federico Bor-

romeo, in “Architectura”, 18 (1988), pp. 123-168; ID., Die italienischen Universitätspaläste des

17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, in “Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte”, 25 (1989), pp.329-380; ID., L’università nelle città europee, in Le Università dell’Europa, vol. IV, Gli uomini e i

luoghi, a cura di Gian Paolo Brizzi - Jacques Verger, Cinisello Balsamo, Silvana Editori-ale, 1993, pp. 21-50; ID., Bartolomeo Ammannati e i Gesuiti, in Bartolomeo Ammannati, scultore

e architetto, 1511-1592, Atti del Convegno di Studi (Firenze - Lucca, 17-19 marzo 1994),a cura di Niccolò Rosselli Del Turco - Federica Salvi, Firenze, Alinea, 1995 (Documentie saggi, 136), pp. 187-194; ID., College, in Dictionary of Art, vol. VII, London, 1996, pp.565-567; ID., University Palace, in Dictionary of Art, vol. XXXI, London, 1996, pp. 673-675; ID., L’architettura del Collegio di Spagna e dell’Archiginnasio. Esame comparato dell’architettura

universitaria bolognese con quella europea, in “Annali di storia delle Università italiane”, 1(1997), pp. 97-107; ID., Piccole e grandi università a confronto: insediamenti universitari in Europa

dal XVI al XVIII sec., in Le università minori in Europa (secoli XV-XIX), Convegno Inter-nazionale di Studi (Alghero, 30 ottobre - 3 novembre 1996), a cura di G.P. Brizzi - J.Verger, Soveria Mannelli (Catanzaro), Rubbettino, 1998, pp. 289-300; ID., La sede del

Sapere. I progetti per la Casa della Sapienza da Giuliano da Sangallo a Francesco di Giorgio Martini,in Le dimore di Siena. L’arte dell’abitare nei territori dell’antica Repubblica dal Medioevo all’Unità

d’Italia, Atti del Convegno di Studi a Siena e a Montepulciano (27-30 settembre 2000),a cura di Gabriele Morolli, Firenze, Alinea, 2002, pp. 139-144; ID., La Pia Casa di

Sapienza di Pistoia, in L’Università e la città. Il ruolo di Padova e degli altri Atenei italiani nello

sviluppo urbano, Atti del Convegno di Studi (Padova, 4-6 dicembre 2003), a cura di Gio-vanna Mazzi, Bologna, CLUEB, 2006 (Centro interuniversitario per la storia delle uni-versità italiane, Studi, 6), pp. 67-78; ID., Libri: loro spazi e loro tempi, dall’antichità alla for-

mazione delle biblioteche universitarie in Italia, in “Annali di storia delle università italiane”,15 (2011), pp. 367-380.

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