The highly productive dramatic culture of the Italian Renaissance and the extensive corpus of stage-setting sketches attest that the space of the theatrical stage became a significant socio-cultural foil for urban architecture. Tragedy, in particular, emerged as the preeminent dramatic genre, closely tied to a vigorous poetological discourse following the rediscovery of Aristotle’s Poetics. The project examines the interplay between the rationalistic Aristotelian approach – characterized by its emphasis on decorum and rooted in the traditional prescriptive poetics of the Cinquecento – and the tragic, understood as the poetic constituent of a literary genre that relies massively on uncontrollable affective impact. Focusing on lesser-known dramatic texts, the project aims to elucidate the specific relationship between the late Renaissance predilection for explosive and brutal topoi (e.g., intrigue, incest, infanticide, regicide, unrestrained violence, on-stage executions, and the mutilation of bodies following sexual acts) and the world-modelling and ideologies inherent to an urban oligarchic court society.