Piazza
della Libertà
Formerly ‘Platea Sancte Marie’, it became Piazza Vittorio Emanuele after the unification of Italy.
Today known as Piazza di Santa Maria, it has always been the heart of the city and a meeting place for religious and civic life.
Archaeological remains testify to the presence of the forum in Roman times.
The seven streets coming from the seven city districts flow into it: the 15th-century chains, which had a legal function, can be seen at their points of access.
📍 Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, City Hall, Clock Palace, Nerei-Roberti Palace, Hypogean Fountain
Cathedral of
Santa Maria Assunta
Founded in the 11th century, its current appearance, with its bright Baroque forms, is the result of the last renovation in 1721 to a design by architects Castrachini and Bizzachero. Work on the façade began in 1898 and was completed in 1901. Other works had transformed and enlarged it in the first half of the 14th century and the second half of the 16th century.
The 18th-century organ built from parts of an earlier 16th-century instrument is valuable.
The wooden choir, the monumental altar (18th century, in which the Relics of the Holy Martyrs Comparators are preserved), and the altarpiece by Giuseppe Bottani from 1752 depicting the ‘Madonna in Glory with the Eight Holy Martyrs’ are also noteworthy.
The palace overlooking the main town square is attested as early as 1295.
A few years earlier, the original town hall, in Piazza Sant'Agostino, gave way to the residence of the Augustinian friars.
On the façade are three coats of arms: on the right is that of Pope Clement VII Medici (1528), on the left that of Paul III Farnese (1535) and in the centre, on the old entrance portal, the ancient coat of arms of the City of Orte.
The staircase, which allowed entry from this side, was demolished in 1846.
City Hall
Built in the early 17th century next to the area occupied by the church of San Giovanni in Fonte (former baptistery).
It began life as the Palazzo del Podestà.
It was at this time that the square began to take on the appearance it has today.
Clock Palace
To the left of the square began the porticoes populated by the workshops of artisans and notaries, the beating ‘heart’ of municipal economic life.
Supported by sturdy columns and Romanesque capitals, the porticoes extended along the entire Via Plana, today's Via Gramsci.
The palace, already present in 1305, has preserved its elegant architectural lines.
Nerei-Roberti
Palace
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Hypogean Fountain
The fountain, despite the numerous alterations and heavy restoration work it underwent in the 17th century, still partly retains its original appearance; two marble columns supporting a cross vault frame its front, consisting of a small arch on pilasters inside which the water flows.
Conceived as a cistern, probably in the Augustan age in correspondence with a much broader phenomenon of monumentalisation of the built-up area, it represented the terminal of the primitive aqueduct that for a long time represented the city's only source of public water supply and storage. The marks on the slabs of the basins can be attributed to the jugs of the women who for centuries queued up to draw water.
The city statutes provided for severe penalties for anyone who soiled it. A custodian, appointed by the Priors, was required to clean it and keep the keys to the door, which no one was allowed to open but him.