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Article: Delight: in a tiny perfect city in an unfashionable part of Italy, there is a treasure that transports us back to the early Renaissance, an unattainable world, yet inhabited by people we know.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Architectural Review
- Article date:
- April 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 EMAP Architecture. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Atri is a perfect Italian hill town. You climb up to it along a snaking road from the valley to a picturesque platform hovering over the Adriatic, ten kilometres away. But it is completely isolated from the ruthless, repetitive, touristic exploitation of the coast. The Abruzzo is almost due east of Rome, and generally thought to be dully exploited, or wild and uncivilized. Yet even in Classical times, the little city was there. The main street, the Corso, follows the Roman Cardo. Over the centuries, it has been added to and changed, but the scale remained -- until our own age, which has sadly seen a fungal cascade of suburbs towards the sea. The town square remains a ...