Dome

Plan of the piazza; Probably the best-known work of Raguzzini is the group of houses on the Piazza di S Ignazio that he built for the Jesuits in 1727-1735. Faced with the problem of finding an appropriate architecture for the cramped site, while respecting the existing buildings and streets, he designed a masterpiece of urban planning. Opposite the façade of S Ignazio he built a group of five apartment blocks set out like the wings of a stage, the ground-plan of their façades being circumscribed by three ellipses touching tangentially. He thus pushed to extremes the theatrical effect pioneered by Pietro da Cortona at S Maria della Pace, Rome, but reversed Cortona's effect, since it is the stage backdrop of the apartment blocks as seen from the church steps that constitutes the visual attraction and not vice versa. Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.groveart.com/ (accessed 1/21/2008)