Aerial view

Palmanova was built on flat ground from 1593 to 1598 by the Republic of Venice to house a military garrison as a protection from Turkish attack on its north-eastern land frontier. Designed for a single purpose, with no conventional social substructure, Palmanova could be laid out as an ideal city according to an Italian urban-planning tradition that had hitherto been confined to theoretical treatises. A group of Venetian engineers including Vincenzo Scamozzi, authors of books on fortification and urban planning, were involved.

An original plan was for a nine-sided central piazza from which streets radiated to nine bastions, those from the three gates in the middle of curtains being blocked off for safety before they reached the piazza. The plan that was realized was similarly based on a regular geometrical figure, a nine-pointed star, forming a polygon of eighteen sides, with a central hexagonal piazza, a design that satisfied both humanists and generals.