Loggia mercantile della Platea Magna

Beneath the houses of Finalmarina's main square runs the vaulted Platea Magna loggia, supported by square and hexagonal pillars of Pietra di Finale. The square was called Platea Magna by 1450, and the loggia's current form dates from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Why it matters

The portico preserves the mercantile character of Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II in Finalmarina. Its bays are carried by substantial pillars of brown Finale stone quarried in the Val Sciusa. A document of 1450 already uses the name Platea Magna for the open square, then directly connected to the beach. The loggia later provided a covered edge for the square's commercial life in a fishing and shipowning town.

What to notice

Square and hexagonal pillars alternate along the portico, their regular stone courses supporting the vaults beneath the houses above. A 1629 altarpiece by Ferdinando Glazer, painted for the chapel of the shipowners' company in Sant'Antonio alla Marina, depicts Finale from the sea with the loggia in its present form. The painting, dedicated to Saints Nicola da Mira and Erasmo, is now in the basilica of San Giovanni Battista.

Context and history

The loggia was built between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with later alterations, along the edge of a square documented since the mid-fifteenth century. The covered portico linked Finalmarina's public square with the beach and its maritime trade. Changes to adjacent buildings and the twentieth-century seafront did not remove the historic arcade, which remains part of the Museo Diffuso del Finale's network of palazzi and logge.