Women of Power: What Women say as Builders of Secular Architecture in Early Modern Italy

This paper will examine several categories of women – wives, widows, rulers, single women – from various regions across Italy to survive the evidence in a comparative format to see just what women were capable of in terms of domestic architecture. Rather than simply listing the women and what they built, I will discuss the types of structures, the women’s hands-on approach to their building campaigns, their sources as funds, and the reasons why they built.