The great feature of Piacenza is its famous piazza--romantically,
picturesquely perfect square, surpassing the most daring attempts
of the scene-painter, and realising a poet's dreams. The space is
considerable, and many streets converge upon it at irregular angles.
Its finest architectural feature is the antique Palace of the Commune:
Gothic arcades of stone below, surmounted by a brick building with
wonderfully delicate and varied terra-cotta work in the round-arched
windows. Before this façade, on the marble pavement, prance the bronze
equestrian statues of two Farnesi--insignificant men, exaggerated
horses, flying drapery--as _barocco_ as it is possible to be
in style, but so splendidly toned with verdigris, so superb in their
_bravura_ attitude, and so happily placed in the line of two
streets lending far vistas from the square into the town beyond, that
it is difficult to criticise them seriously. They form, indeed, an
important element in the pictorial effect, and enhance the terra-cotta
work of the façade by the contrast of their colour.
The time to see this square is in evening twilight--that wonderful
hour after sunset--when the people are strolling on the pavement,
polished to a mirror by the pacing of successive centuries, and
when the cavalry soldiers group themselves at the angles under the
lamp-posts or beneath the dimly lighted Gothic arches of the Palace.
This is the magical mellow hour to be sought by lovers of the
picturesque in all the towns of Italy, the hour which, by its tender
blendings of sallow western lights with glimmering lamps, casts the
veil of half shadow over any crudeness and restores the injuries
of Time; the hour when all the tints of these old buildings are
intensified, etherealised, and harmonised by one pervasive glow. When
I last saw Piacenza, it had been raining all day; and ere sundown a
clearing had come from the Alps, followed by fresh threatenings of
thunderstorms. The air was very liquid. There was a tract of yellow
sunset sky to westward, a faint new moon half swathed in mist above,
and over all the north a huge towered thundercloud kept flashing
distant lightnings. The pallid primrose of the West, forced down and
reflected back from that vast bank of tempest, gave unearthly beauty
to the hues of church and palace--tender half-tones of violet and
russet paling into greys and yellows on what in daylight seemed but
dull red brick. Even the uncompromising façade of S. Francesco helped;
and the Dukes were like statues of the 'Gran Commendatore,' waiting
for Don Giovanni's invitation.