Designed and built after the unification of Italy, between 1862 and 1868, Piazza Cavour is the biggest piazza in the city of Ancona. It lies at the end of the city’s two main streets, Corso Mazzini (aka Corso Vecchio) and Corso Garibaldi (aka Corso Nuovo), which was also built in the same century and takes its name from the statue of Cavour sculpted by Aristodemo Costoli at its centre.
Piazza Cavour is that it’s also a small botanical garden: it is bordered by rows of trees and there are a number of flowerbeds featuring several varieties of plants; it is covered in gravel, with the exception of the walkways that lead around the sides and meet in the middle.
Before its expansion in the 20th century, the piazza was closed off to the east by the 19th-century walls leading from Fort Cardeto, on Mount Cardeto, to the Lunetta Santo Stefano, on Santo Stefano Hill. Here it once opened out onto a monumental archway, Porta Cavour. The walls and the archway were then demolished and Piazza Cavour was joined to the new Viale della Vittoria. This created the ‘da mare a mare’ trail, between the port and the Monument to the Fallen, overlooking the sea.
If the east side is open and continues along Largo XXIV Maggio, which is bordered, one opposite the other, by the 20th-century Palazzo delle Poste and Palazzo del Popolo leading onto Viale della Vittoria, the west side is where the above-mentioned streets open out onto the piazza and features grand buildings with porticos, the south side is bordered by Palazzo delle Marche (the former Palazzo delle Ferrovie) and the north side by residential buildings.
Marche Film Commission — Fondazione Marche Cultura
Piazza Cavour 23 — 60121 Ancona
Phone: +39 071 9951 623/624/625
Email: silvia.pincini@fondazionemarchecultura.it
