GENOESE VILLAS 
and carried out homogeneously, and was thus the pro- 
genitor of all the great street plans of modern Europe — 
of the Place Royale and the Place Vendome in Paris, the 
great Place at Nancy, the grouping of Palladian palaces 
about the Basilica of Vicenza, and all subsequent attempts 
to create an organic whole out of a number of adjacent 
buildings. Even Lenfant’s plan of Washington may be 
said to owe its first impulse to the Perugian architect’s 
conception of a street of palaces. 
When Alessi projected this great work he had open 
ground to build on, though, as Evelyn remarked, the 
rich Genoese merchants had, like the Hollanders, “little 
or no extent of ground to employ their estates in.”’ 
Still, there was space enough to permit of spreading 
porticoes and forecourts, and to one of the houses in the 
Strada Nuova Alessi gave the ample development and 
airy proportions of a true villa suburbana . This is the 
Palazzo Parodi, which, like the vanished Sauli palace, 
shows, instead of the block plan of the city dwelling, a 
central corps de batiment with pavilions crowned by 
open loggias, and a rusticated screen dividing the court 
from the street. It is curious that, save in the case of 
the beautiful Villa Sauli (now completely rebuilt), Alessi 
did not repeat this appropriate design in the country 
houses with which he adorned the suburbs of Genoa — 
those “ravishing retirements of the Genoese nobility” 
which prolonged the splendour of the city for miles along 
the coast. Of his remaining villas, all are built on the 
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