Renaissance and Baroque styles

During the Renaissance (broadly, the 15th century), city-states dominated by powerful rulers emerged in Italy. The papacy based in Rome in the Vatican City was one of these. Florence was another.
Rome
Rome had fallen into decay, and the Church needed to restore the faith of the people in its mission. From the 1470s, several popes began to remodel Rome. They aimed to glorify the Church and the papacy, and enable pilgrims to move more easily within the city. They adopted straight axial streets terminating in vistas marked by columns, obelisks, fountains, and views of grand buildings.
The most ambitious pope was Sixtus V (1585–90). His plan was to cover Rome with a network of straight streets and mark their intersections by obelisks. His legacy to Rome is a classic example of Baroque planning.
The architect Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72) redesigned Rome’s water supply. By 1600 it was the best of any city in Europe. The Baroque remodelling of Rome culminated in the colonnade for St Peter’s Basilica by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680).
Florence
The architect Giorgio Vasari (1511–74) remodelled Central Florence. He created a dramatic vista towards the Uffizi Palace, and placed statues at the end of axial streets.
London
Baroque Rome inspired John Evelyn and Christopher Wren in their plans for a new urban form for London after the Great Fire in 1666.
Versailles
Louis XIV’s Palace of Versailles (built 1668–74), with its famous gardens by André le Notre, had bisecting land and water axes that created impressive vistas. It inspired Pierre L’Enfant when he designed Washington DC as the new capital of the United States of America in 1791.
Paris
When Baron Haussmann reordered Paris between 1853 and 1869, he also looked back to Versailles for inspiration. By 1870, Paris was the ‘wonder of the world’. Haussmann drove a network of boulevards through the city, straightened other roads, created public squares, vistas and sites for important public buildings, and also made the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes into public parks.