ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the social realities lying behind the smooth surface of the ceremony. It will make use of the municipal deliberations and financial accounts of the towns that produced the spectacle. For ceremonial entries, these officials organized the street cleaning in their neighbourhoods. Vagrants were routinely rounded up and put to work cleaning the streets, before being expelled in advance of the actual entry, with some town councils issuing threats of public strangulation should they return. Preparing a ceremonial entry could also lead to a more destructive transformation of the urban fabric. During the Renaissance, ceremonial entries became increasingly elaborate affairs, as the designers began to include temporary buildings and structures, such as triumphal arches and ornate pageant stations in the ceremonial welcome. The New Jerusalem was the archetype of the ideal city, which urban populations used to shape their conception of the physical space in which they lived.