RENAISSAN cE. While the Renaissance was more fruitful in works of private and religious architecture than in municipal architecture, a great 'mintier of notable buildings were erected for public purposes in the cities of Italy and of \Vestern Europe. The general downiztll of civic liberties checked the progress of sonle phases of municipal architecture, but the change of style ushered in by the Ilenaissance led to the erection of many new edifices in the more modern style. Thus in Italy the elegant town hall at Verona (Palazzo del Consiglio ) by Fra iocondo (1470) ; the town hall at Padua, the Loggia del Papa at Siena, the Procurazie Vecchie at Venice, belong to the fifteenth century; to the sixteenth, the Library of Saint Mark, and the Loggetta of the Campanile (demolished by the fall of the tower. 190:2). at Venice. the magnifi cent arcade surrounding the ancient 'Basilica' at Vicenza. by Palladio. and many loggias and ad ministrative palaces in other cities. The IlOtel-de Ville at Paris (1546), the town halls of Rheims. Rouen, and other French cities, and even of small towns like Beaugency, erected in the sixteenth century ; the great town halls of Antwerp and of several Dutch cities, and the picturesque Hat u ser or council halls of Bremen, Nuremberg, Altenburg, Cologne, and other German cities, prove that there was still opportunity for effective and beautiful municipal buildings.
Fountains were also multiplied, often of great elaboration and sculptural splendor. (See FOUN TAIN.) In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries there developed a remarkable move ment for the embellishment of cities by the decorative treatment of open squares and spaces. Of this movement the piazza in front of Saint Peter's, with its colonnades, obelisk and fountain. and the Piazza del Popolo, both at Rome, and the Place de la Concorde and Place Vendome at Paris. are the finest examples. It was in the eighteenth century that a new era of municipal architecture commenced in Germany with the transformation of Berlin under Frederick the Great, followed by that of Munich in the first half of the nineteenth century, and then by that of Vienna, and that of Paris by Baron Paw's mann under Napoleon III. New classes of build ings were developed and erected: museums, pic ture and sculpture galleries, halls of fame, thea tres, and public educational buildings. Every style of architecture was employed. but mainly the neo-classic and neo-Renaissance. The triumphal arch again came into vogue. Great boulevards became the fashion. The old-fashioned narrow streets were discredited, even in Italy. The sun was let in everywhere.