Michele Sanmicheli
English
Sanmicheli built to be shot at. Born in Verona around 1484 into a family of masons, he worked in Rome and Orvieto before returning north, and became the Venetian Republic's military engineer at the moment gunpowder was making medieval walls obsolete.
His answer was the angled bastion: low, thick, faced in stone and shaped so that every approach is covered by fire from the next bastion along. He rebuilt Verona's defences on that principle and worked on fortifications across the Venetian mainland and its territories, and the system spread across Europe as the standard response to artillery.
He also built palaces and churches in Verona, where the fortification sensibility carries over: rusticated stone, heavy gateways and a preference for mass over the lightness Venice favoured. His city gates — Porta Nuova and Porta Palio — are defensive works designed to be architecture as well.
He died in Verona in 1559.
