Piazza dei Signori

Piazza dei Signori, the ancient city's forum and medieval market square, is framed by the Basilica Palladiana, Torre Bissara and Palladio's Loggia del Capitanato.

Why it matters

The official tourism portal of Vicenza calls this the city's most representative square, and the title is literal: the piazza occupies the ground of the Roman forum of ancient Vicetia and continued as the medieval market place, so power and commerce have met here for two thousand years. Its name honours the signori who governed from its edges — the podestà and, after Venice took the city in 1404, the Capitanio, the Republic's highest authority in town. Around it stand the buildings that define Vicenza's image: the Basilica Palladiana with the leaning Torre Bissara at its flank, Palladio's Loggia del Capitanato facing them across the paving, and the twin columns that commemorate Venetian rule.

What to notice

The long southern side is occupied by the Basilica Palladiana, whose serliana loggias transformed the medieval town hall with a classical facade; the brick Torre Bissara stands beside it. Directly opposite rises the Loggia del Capitanato of 1571, its giant composite columns and dense stuccoes conceived mid-project as a triumphal celebration of the Venetian victory at Lepanto; the city council still meets upstairs. Near the Basilica's corner stand the two columns: the earlier crowned by the winged Lion of Saint Mark, emblem of the Republic, erected in 1464, and its companion of 1640 bearing a statue of Christ the Redeemer. The palazzo of Monte di Pietà and the church of San Vincenzo complete the north side, and the arcades and adjoining buildings reflect the square's continuing civic and commercial role.

Context and history

The paving follows the footprint of the Roman forum, and medieval documents describe the platea as the city's commercial heart, a role the square keeps with its markets and fairs. Under the podestà and then the Venetian Capitanio, the buildings around it acquired their representative facades; a residence for the Capitanio is documented on the north side from 1374, and its unsafe successor was replaced in 1571 by Palladio's loggia, left at three arcades when funds ran out and only completed in the twentieth century. The Basilica's transformation, won by Palladio in the 1546 competition, turned the same square into a showcase of Renaissance architecture that influenced buildings across Europe. Bombing in 1945 damaged the ensemble, and postwar reconstruction restored the square's continuity with its past.