(criterion IV)
The urban development of Ferrara is characterised by successive addizioni: progressive enlargements of the city.
- First Addizione (Niccolò II d’Este, 1386)
Pushed the city westwards, towards Via Voltapaletto and Via Savonarola, incorporating kitchen gardens and new noble residences; this is where the small palace of Marfisa d’Este is located. - Second Addizione (Borso d’Este, 1451)
Developed the southern axis along the former course of the Po (Via della Ghiara, now Via XX Settembre), with a straight thoroughfare intended for aristocratic residences; here stands the Palazzo di Ludovico il Moro (Palazzo Costabili), now the National Archaeological Museum. - Addizione Erculea (Ercole I d’Este, 1492)
Doubled the city towards the north. Biagio Rossetti laid out two orthogonal axes – Corso Ercole I d’Este (from the Castle to Porta degli Angeli) and Corso Porta Mare–Corso Biagio Rossetti (from Porta San Benedetto to San Giovanni) – which intersect at the Quadrivio degli Angeli. Monumental palaces and carefully calibrated perspectives made Ferrara “the first modern city in Europe”. Within the new walls Rossetti planned gardens, defensive kitchen gardens and the Carthusian complex with the church of San Cristoforo.
Taken together, the addizioni illustrate the transition from a medieval defensive logic to the humanist ideal of the ordered city, offering visitors today an open-air chronological itinerary that leads from the winding streets of the earliest core to the broad, orderly thoroughfares of the modern age.
The Addizione Erculea
di Francesco Ceccarelli
The urban expansion of Ferrara between the Middle Ages and the early modern period was carried out predominantly through addizioni, that is, “aggrandisements” of the inhabited nucleus of the communal city, achieved by incorporating infra moenia portions, of varying extent, of the surrounding territory. Thus first came Leonello’s addizione (1442), later implemented by Borso (from 1451) in the area of the Polesine di Sant’Antonio (corresponding to present-day Via XX Settembre), and then the one undertaken at the instigation of Ercole I d’Este (1431–1505) between 1492 and 1505, known as the Addizione Erculea (corresponding to the present part of the city lying north of the axis formed by Viale Cavour and Corso della Giovecca and contained within the perimeter of the walls). These enlargements of the urban perimeter were based on preliminary works to reclaim marshy land and on the laying out of new road and defensive alignments that welded the body of the older city to that of the new. The motivations were often multiple, responding primarily to demographic and military needs, but also to considerations of prestige and magnificence.
The ambitious strategy of urban design conceived by Ercole I distinguished itself from those of his predecessors by the breadth of the infrastructural framework, the magnificence deployed through new monuments and, above all, the length of the fortification circuit, conceived in a way that differed radically from the past. The earlier medieval city, with its characteristically linear development, doubled in size, reaching an extent comparable to that of the major Italian cities of the time, such as Bologna, Florence and Milan, and was enriched with numerous houses, palaces and churches. Of the many buildings constructed in Terra Nova only some have come down to us intact. Certain structures have been profoundly altered, others irretrievably lost, yet the imprint of that creation of Ercole I is still largely perceptible in the urban landscape of contemporary Ferrara.If the conception of the eponymous enterprise must undoubtedly be attributed to the Este duke, a large part of the technical and practical operations that led to the urbanisation of Terra Nova are certainly due to the ducal engineer Biagio Rossetti (1444–1516), who, as early as Marc’Antonio Guarini (1621), was remembered precisely for “l’ampliazione della città del duca Hercole I col parere di lui edificata”.