Piazza del Plebiscito

Piazza del Plebiscito is the largest public square in Naples, Campania, lying in the Santa Lucia district in front of the Palazzo Reale. The space was a series of irregular courtyards until the French period. Under Joachim Murat, king of Naples from 1808, the architect Leopoldo Laperuta began a design in 1809 for a semicircular forum, and the work was taken over after the Bourbon restoration. Ferdinand I ordered the construction of the church of San Francesco di Paola, begun in 1816 and completed in 1846 to a design by Pietro Bianchi, which is modelled on the Pantheon in Rome with a domed rotunda and flanked by a curved Doric colonnade of 88 columns. Two equestrian statues stand in front of the church, depicting Charles III and Ferdinand I, the first by Antonio Canova and completed by Antonio Calì. The square received its present name after the plebiscite of 21 October 1860, when voters in the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies approved union with the Kingdom of Italy. Facing the church are the Palazzo Reale, the Palazzo della Prefettura and the Palazzo Salerno, which gives the space a unified neoclassical frame. For long periods the square was used as a car park, but it was pedestrianised in the 1990s and has since hosted concerts, exhibitions and public events. Installations by artists have occasionally been placed here. The paving and statues are maintained by the city, and the square remains the formal civic centre of Naples. It is open at all hours, and visitors usually combine it with the palace, the Teatro di San Carlo and the Gambrinus cafe nearby.