“Every time you enter the square you find yourself in the midst of a dialogue.” So wrote Italo Calvino in his famous masterpiece The Invisible Cities and, perhaps, such an expression encapsulates better than any other metaphor or description the multifaceted and changing aspects intrinsic to these neuralgic city places.

A true locus amoenus for that social animal, which is the human being, who, in the centrality of the square, finds a beating heart of activities, relationships and encounters that have their origin in the much older tradition of the Greekagora. Since the eighth century B.C., in fact, the pólis were born and structured precisely around the square, a pivotal point, along with the acropolis, in the life of every citizen.