Michele Sanmicheli

Who was Michele Sanmicheli?

Michele Sanmicheli, was a Venetian architect and urban planner of Mannerist-style, among the greatest of his era. A tireless worker, he was in charge of designing buildings and religious buildings of great value.

Hired by the Serenissima as a military architect, he designed also numerous fortifications in the extensive Venetian empire, thus ensuring a great reputation. In fact, not only in Italy, where you can find his works in Venice, Verona, Bergamo and Brescia, he worked also in Dalmatia, Zadar, Sibenik, Crete and Corfu. He was probably the only Venetian architect of the sixteenth century to have had the opportunity to study Greek architecture, a possible source of inspiration for the use of Doric columns without bases.