Piazza Mazzini
The square that has always been known as Piazza d'Armi (Piazza Mazzini in official street naming), before the sweeping urban transformations of the twentieth century, lay within a wide open area (at the time on the outskirts of the various built-up centres), crossed, often disastrously, by the river known as the Piazza. The name captured the distinctive feature of its course, which cut across that vast area and split it in two: a space used over time for military drills, fairs, markets, circus shows and merry-go-rounds and, from 1920, even for football matches played by the newly founded local team, Unione Sportiva Vigor.
After countless floods that the embankments built to protect the town repeatedly failed to contain, it was only thanks to major works to regulate and divert the river's course (carried out between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) that this large area of public land began to be built up, taking shape between the 1950s and 1960s also as a public garden at the heart of an important junction of connecting roads.
Always a place of trade and home to a historic livestock fair (linked to the presence of a drinking trough known as 'u viviari), the square was historically seen as the arrival point for visitors from nearby towns, not least because of the coach stop ('u pustali). As evidence of this long-standing commercial vocation, the square still hosts a distinctive onion and pink garlic fair for the feast of SS. Peter and Paul (27-29 June), the town's patron saints.
But it is above all its garden, the villa, with its historic fountain, that represents Piazza d'Armi in the collective imagination of the town: the setting for childhood memories for many Lamezia residents, and although it underwent a restyling in 2015, the villa is today a place where various public and private initiatives come together, aiming to give the square new dignity as a social and cultural space.
The Fontana Nuova
The story of the monumental Fontana Nuova in the gardens of Piazza d'Armi is certainly an unusual one. Designed in 1838 by the engineer Basilio Frangipane, the fountain originally stood in the space in front of what is now the Town Hall, known for that very reason as Largo Fontana Nuova.
The adjective "nuova" (new) referred to the fact that it replaced an older fountain with a drinking trough that stood nearby.
Following the decision to build the Monument to the Fallen of the Great War in the same space occupied by the fountain, in 1923 the town administration moved it to what was then called Piazza Littorio and is today known as Piazza Rotonda, near Piazza d'Armi.
After years of neglect and decay, at the end of the 1940s the fountain was dismantled again and temporarily placed in the courtyard of the school building, where it remained until, in the mid-1950s, with the creation of the public garden of Piazza d'Armi, it was decided to install it there.
In the early 2000s the fountain underwent a restyling that restored its original nineteenth-century appearance, reconstructed through the study of period photographs. In particular, in addition to the restoration of the fluted central group, the upper basin and the well-shaped tank, the fountain was raised on a circular base and several lost elements were rebuilt: the four stone spouts and their small basins, the iron railing and the four external stone vases.