Alberti, learning from Brunelleschi’s design for Santa Maria degli Angeli, and calling a church (or "temple," in contemporary Italian parlance) the greatest and noblest ornament of a city, thus demanded a prominent site for a church—its location in a square and its elevation above the surrounding buildings—so that all of its parts can be admired.

He insisted, moreover, that geometrical proportions must govern the structure in every detail.

The first such church to be built almost to completion, however, Guiliano da Sangallo's Madonna delle Carceri at Prato, begun 1484, shows the inherent difficulties imposed by such a plan (here the Greek cross): geometrical focus is at the center of the plan, whereas the religious or liturgical focus, the altar, is set for practical purposes in the arm of the church opposite the main entrance.

Thus there is a conflict between the geometry of the plan and the implied longitudinal axis.