The search for the center. Second part

In the previous chapter of this series (Remesar 2021) we analysed how, over time, the functional and social complexity that cities are acquiring it is translated into a trend towards polycentrality. If in some moments 'the centre' concentrated the functions linked to power - worldly and religious - and to the economy, since the Late Middle Ages we can observe a trend towards polycentrality marked by the segregation of the economic and social centre- in the context of the appearance of the commercial bourgeoisie and of the guild structure of production - from the centres of religious and/or political power. The commercial cities-many of them port cities- will segregate the commercial centre from the religious centre, but given their status as "free cities" this commercial centre will remain linked to the centre of local political decisions. The central square of the city (cities in Northern Europe and Italy) or the riverside space, in the case of port cities such as Naples or Lisbon, will become the 'centre' of the city. As we will see in this issue, the multiplication of centres will take a particular form in the case of Lisbon, when the political-administrative centre of the King will be located in the space of the economic and commercial centre, splitting it from the religious centre for a period, but grouping this religious centre with the site of the royal power: the palace. This movement of centres presupposes both a physical reorganization of the old ones - with practices of creative destruction - and the construction of new ones, with the consequent displacement and sharing of the primary elements of urbanization (Rossi 1968). In any case, in a structurally religious society, the Church is present in the new centres with the construction of monuments, convents, churches and cathedrals. The organization models of the city, the models about the form of its layout, come both from the classical era -reworked by Scholasticism- and from the practices linked to the different processes of colonization and settlement that occur throughout Europe, as well as the gradual introduction of Renaissance thought.