California Renaissance

California Renaissance covers 22.3 acres and holds 202 addresses across twelve mapped parcels, on six streets: Cellini, Donatello, Giotto, Medici, Michelangelo and Titian. The city zones 21.2 acres of it Residential Medium Density, where the municipal code allows up to 18 units to the gross acre; the measured figure is nine addresses to the acre, half the ceiling.

Pinewood Park is 802 feet from the boundary, 6.1 acres with a softball field and walkways, and Glenbrook Park at 5.2 acres is 996 feet off. Vista Park, a City park, is 1,649 feet away, and Iglesia Park at 1,914 feet is the one park in the city that the City itself owns and maintains, six acres holding a softball field, a sports field, sand volleyball, a tot lot, tennis and handball courts, restrooms and lighting. Argonaut Park runs to 11.9 acres at 1,964 feet. Capistrano Unified's own address locator assigns this ground to Oak Grove Elementary for TK through grade 5, then Aliso Viejo Middle and Aliso Niguel High.

Six streets, six names from Florence and Venice: Giotto, Donatello, Michelangelo, Titian, Cellini and Medici. The first four are artists. Cellini was the goldsmith and sculptor who wrote one of the great autobiographies of the sixteenth century. Medici is not an artist at all but the banking family who took control of Florence in 1434 and paid for most of the rest, Cosimo as patron and then his grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent, who ruled from 1469 to 1492 and became the period's most important buyer of art. Put a street sign in that order and you have the whole system: the makers, and the money that made them possible.

California Renaissance was built in 1989, 202 units on 22.3 acres, two story townhome style plans with two car garages, within walking distance of the Aliso Viejo Country Club, whose Jack Nicklaus course opened a decade later in 1999. Titian, the one street it shares with Altisse next door, is the seam where the two Italian themed communities meet.