Final answer:
The Renaissance palazzo's square plan featured a ground floor designed to impress visitors with features like fountains and gardens, emphasizing the power and authority of the owner. The floor above contained more private, domestic spaces, with additional galleries above the ground floor's porticos. The facade was deliberately plain to maintain privacy.
Step-by-step explanation:
The elements of the Renaissance palazzo's square plan reflect the ideals of symmetry, proportion, and classical architectural features, such as columns and arches, that were typical of the era. In the Palazzo Rucellai in Florence, a prime example designed by Leon Battista Alberti, the ground floor often contained elements designed to impress visitors, including fountains, peristyle courtyards, gardens, and other lavish features located across the atrium from the doorway. This design emphasized the power relationship between a patron and clients, and the authority of the paterfamilias.
On the floor above the ground level, domestic life unfolded more privately. While a sense of layered internal space was revealed to visitors upon entry, the external facade maintained a plainness that contrasted with the internal complexity, a characteristic executed to maintain privacy. The use of additional galleries above the porticos on the ground floor spanned the same length as the porticos, but this internal arrangement was not apparent from the external appearance of the building.