Piazza della Loggia

Piazza della Loggia, or more simply Piazza Loggia, also known as Piazza Grande or Piazza Vecchia (Piàsa dela Lògia or Piàsa ècia in Brescian dialect), is one of the Italian city Brescia's main squares, a symbolic place of the Brescian Renaissance and Venetian rule over Brescia. Designed and built in a unified manner since the fifteenth century, it has an overall rectangular shape and is bordered along its perimeter by a series of historic buildings of a certain artistic interest. On the western side can be seen the 16th-century Palazzo della Loggia, seat of Brescia's municipal council, and on the southern side the two mounts of piety, the old and the new, which, built between the 15th and 16th centuries, constitute Italy's first lapidary museum. On the eastern side of the square, on the other hand, there are the Renaissance arcades and the tower with the 16th-century astronomical clock. In the northeastern section of the square, however, worthy of mention are the Bella Italia monument, donated to the city by Victor Emmanuel II in memory of the Ten Days of Brescia, and Porta Bruciata, a defensive gateway dating back to the Roman-era circle of walls. On 28 May 1974, during an anti-fascist demonstration of trade unions and workers, the square was the scene of a neo-fascist terrorist attack that left eight people dead and about 100 wounded.