Sara Galletti
Associate Professor in the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies

Sara Galletti received an M.Arch. from IUAV (Venice) and a joint Ph.D. in the History of Architecture from the Sorbonne (Paris) and IUAV. Her field of research is early modern architectural theory and practice, with a focus on early modern Europe and the Mediterranean. She has published on secular and religious architecture, on Philibert de L'Orme, on the urban history of Paris, on the relations between space and social structures, as well as on the history of stereotomy.

Current Research Interests

Sara Galletti is working on a book-length project tentatively titled History of Stone Vaulting in the Pre-Modern Mediterranean: Practices, Theories, and Patterns of Knowledge Transfer . The project, funded by a 2021-22 NEH grant, explores the history of a stone vaulting technique called stereotomy from a transnational, longue durée perspective across the Mediterranean from the third century BCE—when the oldest of known stereotomic vaults was built in the Sanctuary of Delphi—through the sixteenth and seventeenth century, when pioneering theoretical works such as those by Philibert de L’Orme (1514–70) and Alonso de Vandelvira (1544–1626) crossed the boundaries of the building trades and stereotomy became the focus of a broader intellectual debate about solid geometry. The project central argument is that the history of stereotomy is far more complex and fascinating than historians have assumed so far and that the practice offers a privileged perspective on the cultural and material exchanges that have taken place, across spatial, linguistic, and chronological boundaries, in the long history of the Mediterranean and its peoples.

Office Hours

By appointment.

Current Appointments & Affiliations

Contact Information

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