1. The Baroque City

2. Western Europe hegemony
The rise of Dutch and English cities.
The development of Atlantic trading.
A widespread urban decline in many other areas: natural disasters, disease, warfare.
Antwerp and Amsterdam as leading cities. Banking, commerce, cultural life. A new urban modernity?

3. Economic transformations
Manufacturing, trading and State control. The importance of Atlantic ports.
Growing fiscal levies on the city.
The role of luxury and fashionable consumer goods.
Printing industry.
The development of service sector.

4. Social life
Mortality and immigration: the outbreaks of bubonic plague.
The women’s movement to the big city.
Discipline function of neighbourhood. Centralized relief agencies.
The flourishment of capital cities. New urban life styles.

5. Baroque landscape
Baroque ideas on geometrical planning were only haphazardly implemented within existing towns.
The example of Noto in Sicily.
Ruralization of urban landscape and urbanization of surrounding areas.
The ‘petrification’ of town dwellings.

7. Urban culture
The fondness of citizens for possessions. New consumer patterns.
Diversification in domestic spaces.
The metropolitan context gained wider moral and social acceptance.
The changed notion of time.

8. Amsterdam
The canal district of Amsterdam as a project for a new port city.
A middle-class environment: the city’s enrichment through maritime trade and the development of a humanist and tolerant culture.
The majority of the houses erected in the 17th and 18th centuries are still present.
A reference urban model.