Sara Galletti

I hold an M.Arch. in Architecture from the Università IUAV di Venezia (1999) and a Ph.D. in the History of Architecture and Urbanism from the Sorbonne Université-Paris IV and IUAV (joint program, 2004).

My research focuses on the history and theory of architecture and urbanism in early modern Europe and the premodern Mediterranean. I have published on the production and reception of architectural knowledge and models across cultural boundaries, the comparative study of early modern architectural treatises, the relations between architecture and social structures, the history of the architectural profession, the history of stereotomy, and urban history.

Currently, I am finishing the manuscript for a book provisionally 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. An introduction to the project is found in Mediterranea, International Journal on the Transfer of Knowledge (2017).

I am also researching two further book-length projects: Practice into Theory: Philibert de L’Orme, the Premier tome de l’architecture(1567), and the Profession of Architecture in Early Modern France and Paris of Waters. Practice into Theory examines Philibert de L’Orme’s treatise in the context of architectural production and discourse in late medieval and early modern France, with a particular focus on the professionalization of architects. Materials based on this project have been published in Architectural History (2021). Paris of Waters focuses on the impact of water on the demographic, social, architectural, and urban development of the city of Paris in the early modern era. It looks at water in a variety of forms—as a resource, a commodity, a means of transportation, a funnel for the city’s waste, and a cause of disaster and death—and makes water visible as a powerful agent of urban transformation.