City and territory in the Globalization Age Conference proceedings 2017, Universitat Politècnica de València Nova Imago Urbis: the transformation of city walls in early Renaissance as a model to recover the image of contemporary city Aritz Díez Oronoz Departamento de Arquitectura. Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Donostia-San Sebastian. Spain E-mail: aritz.diez@ehu.eus Introduction The development of our European cities has drastically transformed its structure and positioning in relation to its territory. From an organization in which both –the City and its territory– responded to essentially distinct entities, the city has extend its infuence to its surrounding, even occupying its environment completely. This kind of development has made disappear in a short period of time, those typical tools which cities used to exhibit themselves as single entities stood out from their natural surroundings – remembering these words of Goethe on his journey through Italy – as belle natura fata per il huomo, diferentiated from nature itself. This city concept as a microcosm – as a self-space singularized by and for the human – gave rise from the spring of the frst urban organizations to the establishment of some city-constituent concepts, largely invariant and traceable throughout all urban acts to date; concepts which are closely related to our need to position ourselves in the world and organise, both physically and symbolically, our surrounding landscape. These mental connections derived from this primitive act of inhabiting – essence of the City after all – have lay down from the origin of our western civilizations the norms for an inhabiting style that in essence remained invariant, producing some types of cities that – although diverse in immediate signs – responded to the same way of asserting themselves against Abstract. The transformation of fortifcations in early Renaissance supposed a revolution not only from a strictly military view: at the same time the medieval fortifcations were replaced by others designed to deal with the artillery, the urban walls which was part of the essence of the European cities from Antiquity had to be transformed. Aware of this problem, several generations of architects coinciding with those that promoted the Renaissance in Italy during the quattrocento and cinquecento, tried to look for a functional, formal and symbolic resolution to this incipient fortifcations against the artillery. The challenge was to give a new form to the new defence works, a “form” that at the same time allowed the maximum of technological correspondence and the maximum of symbolic and visual signifcance for the city. This article discusses the consequences this process had for the defnition of the city’s image from Renaissance to 19th century and exposes some recent project examples that, following the lessons learned during this process of redefnition of fortifcations, tries to give back to the current historic cities its lost image. Keywords: Fortifcations, Image of the City, Imago Urbis, Renaissance http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/ISUF2017.2017.6035 24 th ISUF International Conference 27 th -29 th September 2017 VALENCIA 915