In Book vii of his treatise on architecture, Sebastiano Serlio tells the story of a
wealthy but miserly man who inhabited a house built by his grandfather. The
man loved this house, which was not only his own birthplace but also “quite
commodious and not very old” (non molto vecchia). Serlio recounts, however,
that the new houses round about, designed by “good architects,” made the mi
ser’s house appear “ugly” (brutta) – so much so that it imposed “nausea and
annoyance” (nausea, & fastidio) on the prince of the city. Threatened with
compulsory purchase if he did not rebuild his house, the miser eventually
asked an architect to remodel the façade “in order not to deprive himself of
this home (nido, lit. nest), in which he had been born, nourished and raised.”1
