ABSTRACT
The book titled Der Städtebau and published by Camillo Sitte in 1889 is neither a treatise on architecture nor a planning manual. The small but dense book comprises twelve short essays – or rather, twelve long aphorisms on the subject of the city in the period of modernity. With his book Sitte had no wish to lay down rules and regulations for the architect or town-planner preparing to design a plan. Instead, his intention was to describe the indispensable conditions to be met if the design of urban space was still to be conducted as an artistic operation. Sitte certainly argued with those who reduce cities to the pattern of a chessboard with no respect at all for topography, for historical memories of the place, or for the living habits of its population. But this is only one part of the book and, perhaps, not even the most important. What tormented Sitte was not the regular chessboard laid out by some mediocre surveyor, but the seemingly relentless tendency to withdraw art from public spaces.
