Description
Piazza Mercanti is Milan's medieval square, a short walk from the Duomo: a cozy corner of brick and arches, born in the thirteenth century as the political and commercial heart of the city.
Whoever went bankrupt in medieval Milan ended up sitting on a stone in the middle of the square, amid insults and jeers. Meanwhile, from the little balcony of the Loggia degli Osii, a judge read out the sentence and auctioned off his goods.
The square was an arcaded rectangle with six entrances, one for each sestiere. The streets around took their names from trades: Armorari, Spadari, Cappellari, Orefici, Speronari, Fustagnari.
In the center the podestà Oldrado da Tresseno had the Palazzo della Ragione built, finished in 1233: the law court, with a large hall above an open loggia. It was the model for many similar palaces in Lombardy. In 1773 a floor was added.
On a pillar is Oldrado's stone portrait, celebrated by five Latin verses. Opposite stands the Loggia degli Osii, from 1316, with the parlèra from which edicts were proclaimed.
The square's name comes from the merchants who did business here. Around it are also the Baroque Scuole Palatine, from 1645, and the Gothic Casa dei Panigarola, from the fifteenth century, seat of the notaries.
Don't miss, under an arch of the Palazzo della Ragione, a Roman stone with a boar: by tradition it is the half-woolly sow, the animal that appeared in a dream to the Celt Bellovesus, who according to the legend founded Milan where he found it.
In the center is a sixteenth-century well, topped in the eighteenth century by two columns with an entablature, and nearby the monument to the poet Ausonius, on an arch of the passage of the Scuole Palatine. Between 1944 and 1951 the temporary seat of La Rinascente, destroyed by bombing in Piazza Duomo, found a place here.
The square is still a place for events: open-air exhibitions, markets and concerts. In the nineteenth century it was touched up, but it has kept a medieval flavor, with its buildings of different periods.
Whoever went bankrupt in medieval Milan ended up sitting on a stone in the middle of the square, amid insults and jeers. Meanwhile, from the little balcony of the Loggia degli Osii, a judge read out the sentence and auctioned off his goods.
The square was an arcaded rectangle with six entrances, one for each sestiere. The streets around took their names from trades: Armorari, Spadari, Cappellari, Orefici, Speronari, Fustagnari.
In the center the podestà Oldrado da Tresseno had the Palazzo della Ragione built, finished in 1233: the law court, with a large hall above an open loggia. It was the model for many similar palaces in Lombardy. In 1773 a floor was added.
On a pillar is Oldrado's stone portrait, celebrated by five Latin verses. Opposite stands the Loggia degli Osii, from 1316, with the parlèra from which edicts were proclaimed.
The square's name comes from the merchants who did business here. Around it are also the Baroque Scuole Palatine, from 1645, and the Gothic Casa dei Panigarola, from the fifteenth century, seat of the notaries.
Don't miss, under an arch of the Palazzo della Ragione, a Roman stone with a boar: by tradition it is the half-woolly sow, the animal that appeared in a dream to the Celt Bellovesus, who according to the legend founded Milan where he found it.
In the center is a sixteenth-century well, topped in the eighteenth century by two columns with an entablature, and nearby the monument to the poet Ausonius, on an arch of the passage of the Scuole Palatine. Between 1944 and 1951 the temporary seat of La Rinascente, destroyed by bombing in Piazza Duomo, found a place here.
The square is still a place for events: open-air exhibitions, markets and concerts. In the nineteenth century it was touched up, but it has kept a medieval flavor, with its buildings of different periods.