Piazza Risorgimento (Piazza del Duomo)

Piazza Risorgimento, also known as piazza del Duomo, is a sloping square built over the forum of Roman Alba Pompeia, faced by the cathedral and the medieval town hall.

Why it matters

The square descends from the forum of the Roman city and the medieval platea that succeeded it, preserving a long civic history on the same ground. It is also where Alba's two defining powers meet: the Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, the mother church of the diocese, and the fourteenth-century Palazzo Municipale, the seat of civic government since the communal age. The square brings together Roman remains, medieval towers, later church fronts and the civic life of Alba.

What to notice

The diagonal composition pairs the Duomo's brick facade with its large rose window on one side, the town hall with its through-arch opposite. Several medieval towers survive near the square, including Torre Sineo at the corner toward via Cavour, where its base meets the street in an exposed position. Alba was known as the city of a hundred towers. The square and its surrounding streets preserve traces of the Roman urban grid. The square slopes toward the older city, a feature of its topography and civic character.

Context and history

The ground under the square was the forum of Alba Pompeia, the Roman municipium in the ninth Regio of imperial Italy and the birthplace of the emperor Pertinax. When the Roman street system hardened into the medieval town, the forum's open space became the platea, the communal square where markets, notaries and town government gathered; the Palazzo Municipale of the fourteenth century formalised that role and has kept it ever since. The cathedral of San Lorenzo grew on the same sacred summit, rebuilt from 1486 by Bishop Andrea Novelli around its older bell tower, its facade completed in later restorations with the 1870 rose window. The square's official name honours the Risorgimento, while it is also known locally as piazza del Duomo.