Urban Landscapes and Sites of Power

This chapter assesses how works of praise valued urban buildings and layouts, and places this type of praise into the context of a boom in construction activity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which changed the visage of many cities. It explores some of the built structures that dominate panegyric, like circuit walls, gates, and towers. Religious infrastructure is also central to these works of praise, but they are examined in Chapter 3 and so here we look primarily at ‘secular’ buildings. The chapter will finally consider how urban panegyric engaged with the development of cities as they crystallized into metropolises and asserted their political function as centres of public power both within wider polities (as ‘quasi-capital’ cities) and as autonomous entities in their own right.