Architecture-Building & Construction

Italian Baroque Architecture

San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane The church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome, Italy, built from 1638 to 1641, was designed by Italian architect and sculptor Francesco Borromini in the baroque architectural style. The church’s facade, begun in 1665 and finished in 1667, just after Borromini’s death, features a statue of Saint Charles Borromeo over the main portal, surrounded by a canopy of winged figures. Designed as a pinched oval, the church’s overall shape exhibits a strong tension that helps create the drama and motion characteristic of baroque architecture.Scala/Art Resource, NY

Italians were the pioneers of baroque; the best known was the architect-sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini, designer of the great oval plaza (begun 1656) in front of St. Peter’s. Francesco Borromini produced two masterpieces, both on an intimate scale, in Rome. San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (1638-1641; facade completed 1667) distorts the dome on pendentives into a coffered ellipse to stretch the space into a longitudinal axis; its facade undulates, entablature and all. The plan of Sant’Ivo della Sapienza (begun 1642) is based on two intersecting equilateral triangles that produce six niches of alternating shapes; these shapes, defined by pilasters and ribs, rise through what would ordinarily be a dome, continuing the hexagonal concept from floor to lantern.

Guarino Guarini designed a church in Turin, San Lorenzo (1668-1687), with eight intersecting ribs that offer interstices for letting in daylight. His even more astonishing Cappella della Santa Sindone (Chapel of the Holy Shroud, 1667-1694), also in Turin, has a cone-shaped hexagonal dome created by six segmental arches rising in eight staggered tiers.

French Baroque Architecture

Palace of Versailles Under the direction of Louis XIV, king of France, a royal hunting lodge outside of Paris was transformed into the magnificent Palace of Versailles during the late 17th century. The complex, comprised of lavishly decorated galleries and... salons, formal gardens with fountains and sculptures, and royal villas, was designated a national museum in 1837.Denis Tremblay Labtex Inc.

Seventeenth-century French architects also designed baroque churches, one of their greatest being part of Les Invalides, Paris (1676-1706), by Jules Hardouin-Mansart. The best French talent, however, was absorbed in the secular service of Louis XIV and his government. The Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte (1657-1661) is a grandiose ensemble representing the collaboration of the architect Louis Le Vau, the painter Charles Lebrun, and the landscape architect André Le Nôtre. The Sun King was so impressed that he engaged these designers to rebuild the Château de Versailles on a truly regal scale. The Palace of Versailles became the center of government and was continuously enlarged between 1667 and 1710. Bernini submitted designs for enlarging the Louvre in Paris, but Claude Perrault was finally awarded that commission (executed 1667-1679). French architecture of le grand siècle lacks the exuberance of Italian baroque, but its designers achieved the epitome of elegance.

English Baroque Architecture

Saint Paul's Cathedral In designing Saint Paul’s Cathedral, English architect Christopher Wren, also known as a scientist and mathematician, was heavily influenced by the style known as baroque architecture, previously unknown to England. After the great London fire of 1666 destroyed the old Saint Paul’s, the city commissioned Wren to design a replacement. Wren drew from the baroque style then popular in France and Italy. The facade of Wren’s Saint Paul’s resembles the east front of the Louvre art museum in Paris, France, while the central dome recalls the baroque grandeur of the dome of St. Peter’s in Rome, Italy.Scala/Art Resource, NY

In England the rebuilding of London after the 1666 fire brought to prominence the many-talented Sir Christopher Wren, whose masterpiece is Saint Paul’s Cathedral (1675-1710). He also designed or influenced the design of many other English churches. Among other innovations, Wren introduced the single square tower belfry with tall spire that became the hallmark of church architecture in England and the United States.

Baroque Urban Design

Baroque thinking powerfully addressed the area of urban design. Michelangelo’s Campidoglio (Capitol, 1538-1564) in Rome had already provided a model for the public square, and villas such as Vignola’s Villa Farnese (begun 1539) in Caprarola showed how these important buildings could extend axial ties into the townscape. Baroque church facades frequently had more to do with their accompanying piazzas than with the church interiors. Often, whole new towns were built on formal principles. Early in the 18th century Peter the Great brought Italian and French baroque architects to Russia to create Saint Petersburg. In the New World were built such large urban centers as Mexico City; Santiago, Chile; Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala; Philadelphia; Savannah, Georgia; and Washington, D.C. See Baroque Art and Architecture.

Rococo Architecture

Benedictine Abbey at Ottobeuren The Benedictine abbey at Ottobeuren, Austria, (1748-54) was designed by Johann Michael Fischer, an 18th-century Bavarian architect. The abbey is based on a conventional basilica design. The exterior, though baroque, is relatively simple and restrained, in contrast to the interior which is extremely ornate.Bridgeman Art Library, London/New York

When Louis XIV died (1715), changes in the artistic climate led to the exuberant rococo style. Once again the work of Italians—notably Guarini and Filippo Juvarra—provided the basis for a new thrust. The expression of royal grandeur has survived in Paris’s Place de la Concorde (begun 1753) by Jacques Ange Gabriel and the great axis and plazas (1751-1759) by Héré de Corny at Nancy. A more intimate and personal expression appears in Gabriel’s Petit Trianon (1762-1764) at Versailles. Rococo came to full flower, however, in Bavaria and Austria. The Austrian Benedictine Abbey (1748-1754) at Ottobeuren by Johann Michael Fischer is only one of a brilliant series of spectacular churches, monasteries, and palaces that includes Balthasar Neumann’s opulent Vierzehnheiligen (Church of the Fourteen Saints, 1743-1772) near Bamberg, Germany, and the Amalienburg Pavilion (1734-1739) by the Flemish-born Bavarian architect François de Cuvilliés in the park at Nymphenburg near Munich


The many elaborate colonial churches found throughout Central and South America attest to the power and influence of the Roman Catholic church during baroque and rococo times. They include cathedrals in Mexico City, Guanajuato, and Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico; Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala; Quito, Ecuador; Ouro Prêto, Brazil; and Cuzco, Peru; as well as such northern missions as Sant’ Xavier del Bac in Tucson, Arizona, and the chain of missions on the California coast. The Spanish architect José Churriguera developed an extremely elaborate decorative style that, transferred to Latin America and somewhat debased, was given the name Churrigueresque. See Latin American Architecture.

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