Campo de' Fiori Piazza site features

It is a rectangle, and the first thing you notice is that nothing closes it. There is no church front, no palace facade, no monumental end — just four sides of ordinary tall houses in ochre and dark red, shuttered above, with shops and bars at ground level and no single building asking to be looked at.

In the mornings the middle is full of canvas and wood. Rows of stalls run the length of the square under white awnings, selling flowers, fruit, meat and fish, with crates stacked between them and the ground wet where they have been washing down.

One thing interrupts it. A dark bronze figure in a hooded monk's habit stands on a high granite block in the middle of the stalls, head down, hands holding a book, face hidden inside the hood. It is the only vertical in the square and it is noticeably unfriendly.

Round the base are smaller portraits in relief, and an inscription cut into the granite.

By early afternoon the stalls are gone and the square is a flat empty rectangle of paving. By evening the bars have taken it, tables pushed out from all four sides, and the same space is loud until late.

Set into the paving of the market street is a small plaque, easy to walk over, with Hebrew lettering on it.

No church

The only monumental square of Rome's historic centre that does not host a church or basilica.

The Giordano Bruno monument

Ettore Ferrari's, erected 9 June 1889 on the exact spot of his death; he stands defiantly facing the Vatican. The granite base carries the effigies of other famous heretics, scenes from his life, and the inscription A Bruno, il secolo da lui divinato, qui dove il rogo arse.

The 2011 Talmud plaque

Set into the marketplace street, commemorating the burning of the Talmud on 9 September 1553, the first day of Rosh Hashanah. It quotes the martyrdom of Rabbi Hananiah ben Teradion and Meir of Rothenburg's lamentation for the manuscripts burned in Paris in 1242.

The market

Here since 1869, from Piazza Navona; historic wooden stalls selling flowers, fruit, meat and fish always fresh, every morning Monday to Saturday on Turismo Roma's account, daily on the reference work's.

The trade streets

Balestrari (crossbow-makers), Baullari (coffer-makers), Cappellari (hat-makers), Chiavari (key-makers), Giubbonari (tailors).

The Borgia inn

The Taverna della Vacca, at the southwest corner, by Via de' Cappellari, belonged to Vannozza dei Cattanei, lover of Alexander VI Borgia — the family seal is still on the house facade.

La Terrina

Lidded in travertine in 1622 after the market turned it into a washing tub; nicknamed for a large soup tureen; once ran Castelli wine instead of water on feast days; 35 years in the Testaccio depot; now in front of the Chiesa Nuova. The square's 1898 copy has no lid.