La imagen de la norma en la Plaza de Santo Domingo del siglo XVIII

Abstract

The objective of this study is to show, by means of a three-dimensional geo-referenced model, how some rules and formulas of Vitruvius’s Ten Books of Architecture were applied during the eighteenth century in the architectural renovation and modernization of the Plaza of Santo Domingo in Mexico City. To begin with, I consider two facts: first, entire chapters of this millennial treatise on European architecture were quietly converted into Laws of the Kingdoms of the Indies in the sixteenth century by the Spanish monarchs Charles I and his son Philip II, especially the decrees of the Ley de población de ciudades, villas y pueblos (1523), and in the Ordenanzas sobre descubrimientos, población y pacificación de las Indias (1573). Secondly, it is under these new rules converted into Laws of the Kingdoms of the Indies, that some of the Vitruvian principles were kept written, printed and in force in New Spain, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, and were included in all editions of the government book Recopilación de Leyes de los Reinos de las Indias.