Piazza Aurelio Saffi

Piazza Aurelio Saffi is Forlì's wide, porticoed civic square, where four historic streets meet among the Romanesque campanile, civic tower, Renaissance palaces and statue of Aurelio Saffi.

Why it matters

The square predates its present name by seven centuries. It began as the Campo dell'Abate, land handed over in 1212 by the prior of San Mercuriale to the Forlì community, and grew into Piazza Grande, the marketplace where commerce, tournaments, preaching and public punishment all played out under the gaze of the surrounding towers. The Smart Heritage research project documents markets, feasts, jousts and executions in the days of Caterina Sforza's Forlì. The square has continued to serve as a setting for civic and commercial life.

The square brings together Palazzo Comunale and the civic tower, Palazzo del Podestà, Palazzo Albertini, the abbey of San Mercuriale and the twentieth-century Post Office. Historic streets converge on this civic centre, including the course of the ancient Via Emilia.

What to notice

The east side of the square is occupied by San Mercuriale: its abbey church, monastery and striped Romanesque campanile are emblems of Forlì. The Town Hall extends along the north, with its rebuilt clock tower; the Gothic portico of Palazzo del Podestà and Venetian loggia of Palazzo Albertini mark the west, while Bazzani's travertine Post Office represents the twentieth century. The curved facade of the Church of the Suffragio stands at the head of Corso della Repubblica. The square's porticoes frame its civic space. The Montone river once ran through this area, and the civic tower incorporates an older structure. The statue at the centre honours nineteenth-century patriot Aurelio Saffi, after whom the piazza is named.

Context and history

Three layers explain the square. The communal layer is medieval: the Campo dell'Abate transfer of 1212, the rise of Piazza Grande as the city's commercial and ceremonial core, and the palaces that public institutions built around it. The papal and civic-improvement layer stretched from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, tuning proportions and facades. The twentieth-century layer is destructive and restorative at once: German demolitions of 1944 brought down the civic tower and much around it, and the postwar decades returned the ensemble to wholeness — the tower rebuilt in the mid-1970s in brick on a concrete core, the post office already installed in 1932 having established the modern side. The square that results is therefore not a surviving shell but a reassembled stage, which is precisely why it still works.