Camillo Sitte. Optically constructed space and artistic city building

The description of city building according to artistic principles undertaken by Camillo Sitte in his famous book Der Städte-Bau is formulated on the basis of the effect that urban space has on the observer. But an aesthetic analysis based on purely visual terms is not an exclusively Sittian choice. On the contrary, it is amply subscribed to by Romantic aesthetics and is typical of a series of artistic theories of the second half of the 19th century. These theories -- based on the principle of the artistic perception of the observer -- can be ascribed to the broader context of early 19th-century epistemological discoveries placing vision in the context of the functioning of the human body, thus giving rise to models of subjective vision in a great number of disciplines. The aim of this paper is to take a step forward this discourse in an attempt to place Sitte's contribution within the founding movement, in modernity, of a science of art based on the functioning of the human body, thus resulting, hopefully, in a broader understanding of art and science in the 19th century, as part of a single interlocking field of knowledge and practice. In fact, the labelling of Sitte as "romantic" by 20th century historiography stressed the separation between art and science, while missing the point that the principles of artistic city building introduced by Sitte were based on an optically constructed space, founded on the functioning of the body which he investigated in physical, psychological and anatomical terms. This paper represents, therefore, a contribution on the physiological and psychological background of Sitte's understanding of city planning as well as on the "bodily experience" that underpins his theory.