Art and Design Commons^™

The Festive City, Evelyn Lincoln, Emily J. Peters

Books

In early modern Europe (1500-1800), festivals enlivened civic spaces with a frequency, scale, and magnificence unrecognizable to us today. Festivals marked ritual moments, praised political agendas, and provided public entertainment. Europe’s papal court, sovereign powers, civic governments, and high aristocracy sponsored festivals for all sorts of occasions, staging joyous entry processions when foreign dignitaries entered a city, celebrating coronations, marriages, royal births, and funerals, and honoring saint’s days and Carnival season. Festivals shaped the public spaces of European cities. Buildings, plazas, stairways, and roadways were constructed specifically with festivals in mind. Likewise, festivals put the social structure of the city …