Piazza Pretoria

Piazza Pretoria fills Palermo’s historic centre with a public square dominated by Fontana Pretoria and surrounded by historic buildings. Palermo’s town hall stands beside it, near Quattro Canti and churches including San Giuseppe dei Padri Teatini and Santa Caterina d’Alessandria. The nearby dome of San Giuseppe dei Teatini adds another landmark above the Renaissance sculptures.

Francesco Camilliani designed the fountain in the sixteenth century for a Tuscan villa owned by Peter of Toledo. Financial problems led its owner to sell the work. The Senate of Palermo bought it in the 1570s for the square before the magistrate’s palace, then sent it from Florence in more than six hundred pieces. Camilliani’s son Camillo reassembled the damaged ensemble and adapted missing elements for Palermo.

An elliptical structure measuring nearly thirteen metres high carries more than fifty statues, balustrades and four main entrances. Tritons, nereids, sirens, harpies, sheep and a rhinoceros crowd its sculpted levels. Reclining figures represent Palermo’s four ancient rivers: Papireto, Gabriele, Maredolce and Oreto. Water falls from animal mouths and monsters into several basins, while a cherub at the top holds a cornucopia. The twelve Olympian gods and four seasons turn the fountain into an open-air gallery of Renaissance mythology. Nude figures shocked locals after its arrival, giving the square its enduring nickname, Piazza della Vergogna.