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The Piazza Ducale of Vigevano is a large Renaissance-style square. Its construction began in 1492 at the behest of Ludovico il Moro as an antechamber of the castle and was completed in 1494. It is a rectangular square that winds under the arcades on three sides and which sees the fourth side occupied by the Cathedral of Vigevano. It should be noted that above each arch of the arcades there are medallions depicting historical figures of the Renaissance period with some mottos that distinguish them. The beating heart of the city, it is connected by a staircase to the Vigevano Castle and the Bramante Tower which overlooks the roofs of the center and which remains, still today, the tallest building in the city. 134 m long and 48 m wide, it is built on three sides (the fourth is occupied by the Cathedral Church of Sant'Ambrogio) with homogeneous buildings with uniform façades and arcades surrounding a forum that follows the Roman model described by Vitruvius. The area had been characterised by a wide road surrounded by buildings mostly arcaded, including that of the municipality. As a result of the fourteenth-century expansion, it developed north of the fortified promontory of the ancient village which disappeared with the Visconti and Sforza transformations that led to the construction of the current "castle". The village and the primitive adjoining castle, located in an elevated position, was accessed by means of a ramp or perhaps a staircase placed in correspondence with the current tower which serves as the entrance to the castle. The new square was built under the direction of the ducal engineer Ambrogio da Corte with the demolition of the houses located towards the escarpment on which the castle stands and the reuse of the buildings to the north and west, aligning them with the reconstruction of the facades. The Sforza construction had the south side interrupted, in correspondence with the tower, by a wide connecting ramp between the square and the castle; the west side extended up to the escarpment of the castle (some arches with the original columns are inserted in the Commercio café) and was divided into two parts joined by a triumphal arch at the entrance to via del Popolo, while on the north side, in correspondence of the connection with the west one, just in front of the ramp, there was a triumphal arch with three arches corresponding to the entrance to via Giorgio Silva. The facades were totally decorated with frescoes very similar to the contemporary paintings of Palazzo Bottigella in Pavia. The current form is the result of the intervention of 1680, carried out by bishop Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz, in which the ramp is demolished and a staircase is built, inserted in the completion of the missing section of the south side, part of the west side (towards the castle) is incorporated in the southern body. The layout of the square was definitively modified by Caramuel with the construction of the new facade of the cathedral: a concave facade, leaning against the church like a theatrical backdrop, which embraces and welcomes the enclosure of the square, overturning the Sforza square-castle relationship, transforming it into a square. church. In an unknown period, perhaps in the mid-18th century, the triumphal arches were replaced, completing the rhythm of the arches, with new columns of material and construction different from those of the 15th century. In the first half of the eighteenth century the Austrian occupiers placed a statue of St. John of Nepomuk, which still characterizes the western side of the square today. The pavement with pebbles and serizzo slabs dates back to the mid-nineteenth century, when the pavement of the arcades, originally in herringbone bricks, was also replaced with the current one. In 1911, by the architect Moretti, the design was made with white pebbles and the street lamps were inserted. Between 1905 and 1910 an extensive restoration was carried out which brought to light the fragments of the Sforza frescoes, hidden by the eighteenth-century paintings, by the Vigevanese painters Casimiro Ottone and Luigi Bocca, which integrates the fragments with a new pictorial decoration in Renaissance style; during the works the roofs are redone with the construction of the eclectic fireplaces and the current lampposts are installed. On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of its construction, between 1992 and 1996, the repainting of the decoration of the beginning of the century is carried out and the restoration of what remains of the original Sforza frescoes. The square is a meeting and meeting place, certainly the favourite of the Vigevanese people, and the main point of reference for tourists. It houses various shops and also the stop of the tourist train of the city.