ABSTRACT
Northern and central Italy, with more large cities than any other region in Europe, experienced a marked decrease in its total population during the first half of the seventeenth century, an outcome of intermittent periods of plague and famine. However, what is remarkable about this sad period in Italian history is that population decline and economic stagnation had a perverse effect on the development of the built environment. Mainly because of disease and famine, the population of the whole of Italy decreased markedly from 12 million in 1600 to 11 million in 1650, although it fell less dramatically than during the Black Death of the 14th century when it had plummeted by around 50 per cent. The decline in the urban population undoubtedly decreased the size of the total population of the peninsula - from 12 to 11 million.
