WREN'S CHURCHES AND HIS PLAN FOR LONDON
noble columns of almost academical neutrality. Yet they are used to
create a spatial polyphony which only die Baroque could appreciate
—architecture of PurcelTs age.
It is in connection with the spatial qualities of his ground plans
that one should consider Wren's plan for the rebuilding of London
after the fire of 1666. He suggested sweeping alterations in the pat-
tern of the city, new long, wide and straight streets meeting in star-
shaped squares. Now this principle of the rond-point with radiating
streets originated from the Italy of the Renaissance (see p. 86), was
put into practice by the Mannerists—the most famous example is
Scamozzi's nonagonal town and fortress of Palmanova in theVeneto
(l593)5 a Baroque example of about 1660 is the Piazza del Popolo
inRome with the Corso and the two other straight streets (seep. 124)
—and taken over late in the i6th century by the French. Under
Louis XTV. France (where the radiating chapels of the church plan
had been conceived six hundred years before) became the second
home of the rond-point. From Louis's reign dates the Place de TEtoile,
although it was then in the country and became part of the city of
Paris only after 1800. The grandest example of such planning on an
enormous scale is, of course, Versailles (fig. 89). The garden front
of the palace, 1,800 feet long, faces Le Notre's magnificent park with
its vast parterres of flowers, its cross-shaped sheet of water, fountains,
seemingly endless parallel or radiating avenues, and walks between
tall trimmed hedges—Nature subdued by the hand of Man to serve
the greatness of die Icing, whose bedroom was placed right in the
centre of the whole composition. On the town side the cour d'honneur
receives three wide converging roads coming from the direction
of Paris. Town-planning was strongly influenced by these principles
everywhere. Of the i8th century the most notable examples are
perhaps Karlsruhe in South-West Germany, a whole town designed
.in 1715 as one huge star with the Ducal Palace as its centre, and
L'Enfant's plan of 1791 for Washington, D.C.
As for Britain, Wren's plan fell through after having been con-
sidered by the king for only a few days. Was it too daring ? Could
it have been carried out only in an absolute monarchy, where ex-
propriation for schemes of civic grandeur was easier than in die City
of London ? Or was this logical, uncompromising programme to
organise the background for future London life simply too un-
English ever to be taken seriously ? The fact remains that the con-
tribution of London to town-planning of the I7th and i8th centuries
173