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.
History
The creation of the “Platea Magna” In the 15th century, Brescia was in fact a city without a public square, since there was no functional space for public gatherings. The image that emerged of the Lombard capital was therefore "deformed and disordered", and the inauguration of a new square "was intended to constitute both the seat of the Venetian government and the new urban center".An early development of Piazza della Loggia was thus promoted on the basis of these premises. The work, not surprisingly, was encouraged by the Venetian podestà Marco Foscari, brother of the then Doge Francesco. It was thanks to the intervention of the aforementioned Marco Foscari that, during 1433, the city's grand council unanimously voted a measure aimed at the demolition of shacks and hovels, owned by the municipality, that were located next to the modern square:Marco Foscari supports this urban intervention by, among other things, reiterating that a "multum famosa et magnifica civitas ” such as Brescia needed a public square, thus replacing the previous cluttered hovels and dwellings. For further discussion, see at that time, in fact, there was only the small clearing outside Porta Bruciata, near the church of San Giuseppe, which was considered too small and, precisely, unsuitable for hosting events of a public nature.
The first Loggia and civic buildings After clearing the space previously occupied by alleys and hovels, the city authorities proceeded by endowing the square with new buildings, among which a loggia, modelled after other Italian cities, would be primary in importance. A first loggia structure was erected in 1436, based on the design of the ducal architect Niccolò Lupo. This first palace had exterior frescoes depicting the Brescian bishops Philastrius and Apollonius, created by the painter Alessandro d'Ardesio. The structure, moreover, was crowned with a statue depicting St. Mark, an obvious tribute to the lordship of the Serenissima.
Having finished the western portion of the square with the erection of the aforementioned loggia, they proceeded by erecting in 1437, this time on the eastern side, a first turret equipped with a clock. It again consisted of a loggia structure designed by architect Lodovico Beretta, designed so that it rested directly on the fortified walls of the New Citadel. Later a first clock, placed on the same turret, was completed in 1447 and decorated not only with the coats of arms of the rulers and the city, but also with two statues sculpted by Andriolo Vigevano depicting Mary and the archangel Gabriel. The same clock face was probably modified when the eastern porticoes of the square were built, as testified by a wooden inlay in the choir of the Church of Saints Bartholomew and Stephen in Bergamo, which is useful for tracing at least a partial reconstruction of the 15th century core of the Brescian square.
The southern side of the square and the first Italian lapidary museum The city council, after decorating the west and east sides, therefore decided to erect in 1465 a wall of carved stones in the southern portion of the square, so that it would serve as a support to erect an eventual palace there in the future. However, two unexpected events prompted the municipal authorities to change what had been previously planned: in carrying out the demolition work on the houses in that portion of the square,The work in question, among other things, also involved the then home of the grammarian Gabriele di Concoreggio, and had the ultimate purpose of storing salt deposits there. For further discussion, see “certain beautiful ancient stones with epitaphs and beautiful ancient writings,” that is, marbles and epigraphs from the Roman age, as reported by the chronicler Iacopo Melga in his chronicle, were found underground. Another factor of some importance was the burning, in the same area, of some huts and woodworking shops, which caught fire as a result of the celebrations desired by the population for the peace of Bagnolo in 1484.
In light of these events, the general council of the Municipality of Brescia, assisted by the superintendence of the deputies for public buildings Marco Ducco and Tommaso Baiguera, resolved that, between 1484 and 1485, all the classical epigraphs, found in the area of the prisons and Porta Paganora, should be precisely included in the building that was being constructed in the southern part of the large square. Thus was created the so-called Lapidarium, as well as the first lapidary museum in Italy. In this same building, then, a few years later, the Old Mount of Piety would be established, built permanently between 1484 and 1489 by Filippo Grassi in elegant Venetian forms.These arrangements should be understood not only from a practical point of view, i.e., for the purpose of reuse of stone materials found on site, but primarily and above all by virtue of a certain humanistic sensibility, which at the time was precisely established in Brescia: as the scholar Theodor Mommsen had the opportunity to observe, this lapidary museum was much desired by a number of Brescian intellectuals and humanists, who had a marked sensitivity to the classical age and the Roman past of the city, so much so that Roman inscriptions and epigraphs were placed on the walls of the buildings erected, not coincidentally at the level of the observer. Further evidence of this cultural climate is the fact that the humanist Michele Ferrarino, in 1486, defined the Renaissance square with the Latin Forum and the loggia building as a basilica.It is no coincidence, in fact, that Andrea Palladio described the public palace in Brescia, in his Quattro Libri, as a “basilica of our times”. Cf. Andrea Palladio, I quattro libri dell’architettura, appresso Dominico de’ Franceschi, Venezia 1570, book III, p. 42.
The new palace of the Loggia
As early as the 1560s, there was a need for the city authorities to meet in a room of sufficient size and splendour to accommodate the offices that would be housed there. For this reason, on 8 July 1467, it was decided to build a room over the existing loggia and over the Garza River: this room, used by the various councils, housed the chancellery, the treasury, and the tax office.
Work began that, according to the plans of the ducal engineer and other technicians and architects, would later lead to the laying of some stones on the bed of the Garza River so that a much larger building could be built and stabilized above it. It was not until 1489, however, that the earlier decision to build it on the west side of the square and over the Garza itself was reaffirmed. In fact, between 1491 and 1492, the pre-existing loggia was completely demolished in order to construct a new building for the civic magistrates: it is not known whether the materials of the pre-existing building were reused, although it is still evident that the Renaissance loggia that was built was devoid of 15th-century decorative elements. At this point, the deputies wanted to carefully select, among the various projects submitted, the one that was considered the most suitable for the palace: among the ancient sources, the scholar Baldassare Zamboni, in the eighteenth century, hypothesized that the design of the loggia built could be attributed to Bramante.
The first project for the palace was to consist of a wooden model presented by the architect Tommaso Formenton: Formenton himself was inclined to come to the city in person to illustrate more clearly his ideas about the location of the public palace. On 6 November 1489, it was agreed that the model would be taken from Vicenza to Brescia: Formenton took care of bringing the wooden model himself, transporting it from Vicenza in a cart drawn by four horses and accompanied by a foot soldier and a helper.
The beginning of the construction works was inaugurated during a solemn public event organized specifically to celebrate the construction of the Palace: in the presence of the then Bishop of Brescia, Paolo Zane, as well as many members of the clergy, municipal authorities, magistrates and a large number of citizens, the first stone was laid and then blessed by the Bishop himself on 5 March 1492, according to the chronicler Elia Capriolo:
The first phase of the construction of the palace was completed around 1510, when Brescia was under French rule, although the works had been suspended since 1508, the year in which the League of Cambrai was founded. At that time, however, the lower part of the palace, begun in March 1492 and completed at the beginning of 1504, had been completed; the sculptural decoration of this part, on the other hand, was carried out between the summer of 1493 and the spring of 1506.
The transformation of the square and the palace after the sack of Brescia
The construction phases of the Palazzo della Loggia are very complex and linked to the historical and political events of the time. It is no coincidence that, at the end of the first decade of the century, the political climate in Europe became increasingly tense: the events of the War of the League of Cambrai were imminent, and the first French incursions into Brescia can be interpreted as a sign of a process that was coming to an end. In a few years, the sack of Brescia in 1512 by French troops under the command of Gaston of Foix would not only devastate the city, but also destroy the myth of the so-called Brixia magnipotens.On the myth of Brixia magnipotens see with relevant notes to the text, bibliography and documentation cited. The great Renaissance construction sites of the city came to a halt, including that of the Palazzo della Loggia, which still had, at the base of the scaffolding, many reliefs by Gasparo Cairano ready to be installed on the fronts of the second floor, including the two angular trophies, which remained there for a period of fifty years, waiting for the resumption of work under the direction of Lodovico Beretta, precisely in 1549–1550. The city's priorities changed radically, from artistic and cultural splendour to the recovery of basic vital functions; the building of the Loggia was not completed until 1574, almost a century after the start of construction.
Resumption of the construction of the Loggia and other works on the square