“Madrid and the Wider World: Domestic Architecture and the Spanish Empire the Sixteenth Century”: Translating Cultures in the Hispanic World International Conference, November 2013, convened by Claudia Hopkins and Iain Boyd-White, University of Edinburgh

With Madrid as the capital of the Spanish empire from 1561, the Castilian monarchy designed new spaces in the old city that were intended to reflect imperial glory. Philip II of Spain regulated the building fabric in Madrid to conform to a homogeneous imperial city model. The relationship between the legislation enacted in Madrid and other cities in Iberia will be compared with architectural policies in America and Europe. This paper proposes a novel perspective on the utopian planning of Madrid in the period 1561-1584, through comparison with urban legislation enforced in other domains of the empire. With the use of comparative analysis, historical data and digital re-creation tools this paper proposes that we must reassess our understanding of Habsburg urbanism as a "transnational" phenomenon.