idea of the canal town, in Filarete's Sforzinda every other street had a canal for cargo transport. The canal system also connected with the river, and thus the outside world, for the import and export of goods. The city also contained many buildings, including parishes and separate schools for boys and girls. An example of a building that appears in the treatise is Filarete’s House of Vice and Virtue, a ten-storey structure with a brothel on the bottom and an academy of learning on the higher levels. Filarete did much study on representation of Vices and Virtues, and there are suggestions that his radial design for the city was inspired by St. Augustine’s Earthly City, whose circular shape was divided into sections, each of which had its own Vice and Virtue. The design of Sforzinda may have been in part a direct response to the Italian cities of the Medieval period, whose growth did not necessarily depend on city planning as such, which meant they could be difficult to navigate. In part, the Renaissance humanist interest in classical texts may have stimulated preoccupations with geometry in city layouts, as for example, in Plato's description of Atlantis. Filarete’s ideal plan was meant to reflect on society – where a perfect city form would be the image of a perfect society, an idea that was typical of the humanist views prevalent during the High Renaissance. The Renaissance ideal city implied the centralized power of a prince in its organization, an idea following closely on the heels of Dante’s that “The human race is at its best under a monarch.” Thus it could be argued that the Renaissance ideal city form was tensioned between the perceived need for a centralized power and the potential reality of tyranny. Influence on architecture and urbanism Filarete's plan of Sforzinda was the first ideal city plan of the Renaissance and his thorough organization of its layout embodied a greater level of conscious city planning than anyone before him. Despite the many references to medieval symbolism incorporated into Sforzinda's design, the city's principles became the archetype for the humanist city during the High Renaissance. The treatise gained interest from many important leaders such as Giangaleazzo Sforza and Piero de' Medici and later when Francesco di Giorgio and Leonardo da Vinci began to plan their ideal cities they borrowed ideas from Filarete. Although it was never built, Sforzinda served