The ritorno all’antico of the Renaissance architects took place as a recovery of types, shapes, and ornamental motifs, but also as a recovery of environmental ideals. Ideals that, on the one hand, were emblazoned on the haloed prestige of classical time, but on the other hand had to address the problems of real time, the present. This came to the fore in how Renaissance architects had to deal with technologies that either were unprecedented in the classical tradition, or had been viewed with suspicion by ancient authors. Such was the case of the technologies of fire. Starting with this premise, the chapter will study the most representative of these traditions, that of the fireplace. It will present its origins in the monastic and palatial architecture of the “Autumn of the Middle Ages,” in addition to its technical evolution in the course of the Renaissance thanks to the recommendations of treatise writers, from Filarete to Scamozzi, passing through the commentators on Vitruvius, Serlio, Palladio, and Philibert de l’Orme
Eduardo Antonio Prieto González (Wed,) studied this question.