Piazza Santissima Annunziata

This lovely square was the first Renaissance attempt at a unified architectural ensemble. It marks the transition from medieval to modern urban design, and it is the direct ancestor of Michelangelo's Campidoglio in Rome, the royal squares of 17th-century Paris and the residential squares of 18th-century London.

Arcaded on three sides, with a pair of matching palazzi on the fourth, the Piazza owes its beauty and its importance not to a single planner, but to what Edmund Bacon, in his classic Design of Cities, calls the 'Principle of the Second Man'.

The Piazza was already in existence when Brunelleschi built his arcaded Spedale degli Innocenti on one side. The 'Second Man' in this case was Antonio da Sangallo the Elder, brother of Giuliano da Sangallo. Commissioned in 1516 by the Servite Order to build a convent opposite the hospital, he decided on an arcaded façade of what became known as the Loggiato dei Servi (now a hotel) that would mirror and complement Brunelleschi's work. By continuing the previous architect's vision instead of insisting on something 'original' of his own, he transformed an isolated building into a unified symmetrical composition.