Measuring and Shaping the Late Medieval City: Mathematical Descriptions of City Walls in Florence and Milan

The article presents the use of mathematical tools (both calculation and geometry) in the perception of late medieval urban space. For this purpose, two descriptions of city walls of the late medieval Italian city have been compared. The first describes the city walls of Florence, and originates from Giovanni Villani’s Nuova Cronica; the second pertains to the fortifications of Milan, and originates from the much less known Cronica extravagans by Galvano Fiamma. Both authors used data from measurements and knowledge of the principles of geometry to illustrate the splendour of their respective cities and to help readers visualize them.