FERRARA: city centre guided tour (classic tour)

Ferrara became an intellectual and artistic centre that attracted the greatest minds of the Italian Renaissance. The humanist concept of the 'ideal city' came to life here in 1492 and it marked the birth of modern town planning. It is an outstanding planned Renaissance city which has retained its urban fabric virtually intact. Among the great Italian cities Ferrara is the only to have an original plan that is not derived from a Roman layout. It did not develop from a central area but rather on a linear axis, along the banks of the Po River, with longitudinal streets around which the medieval city was organized. The most significant characteristic of Ferrara's urban history rests on the fact that it developed, for the first time in Europe, on the basis of planning regulations that are in use nowadays in all modern towns. Ferrara is the only planned Renaissance town to have been completed. The brilliant Este court attracted a constellation of artists, poets and philosophers during Renaissance time.