Piazza Matteotti

Sarzana's civic life centres on Piazza Matteotti, described as the city's civic heart since the Middle Ages. The town hall, arcaded houses and cafés surround the First World War memorial at the centre of the square.

Why it matters

The municipality lists its headquarters on Piazza Matteotti, described as the civic heart of Sarzana since the Middle Ages. Public life here includes municipal government and civic commemorations. The square connects the fortress district, cathedral axis and Via Mazzini.

What to notice

The memorial known as the Procellaria, inaugurated in 1934, is built from great blocks of white Carrara marble on a rectangular plan. A basin on its eastern side collects water spouting from the sculpted bust of a nude male figure holding a shield; on the opposite side and rear, soldiers haul a cannon by hand. Under the front cornice a plaque lists 154 names of the fallen of 1915–1918 in four columns. Above it all a bronze Victory has just landed, wounded: her left hand grips the struck wing that will not rise again. The sculptor was Carlo Fontana of Sarzana, also credited with the Quadriga dell'Unità in Rome.

Palazzo Roderio's main door and two-column balcony face the square; the building's other side turns to Piazza Luni behind an early nineteenth-century arcade. Its courtyard holds Roman fragments from Luni and the tomb of jurist Benedetto Celso, reminders of the Lunigiana's history.

Context and history

The portal's claim that the square has been the civic heart since the Middle Ages is not ornament: Sarzana grew around this node between its fortifications and its churches, and the town hall's first designs date to 1466, though wars among the powers contending for the city dragged completion out to 1554. The original Florentine scheme was bent toward Genoese taste — the square's architecture literally records the tug-of-war over Sarzana.

The present name honours Giacomo Matteotti, the socialist deputy murdered by Fascists on 10 June 1924. The war memorial belongs to the following decade, its wounded Victory opening in 1934. The square brings together three layers of Italian history.