Piazza Grande (Sito UNESCO)

Piazza Grande is the main square of Modena, located in the historic center. With Duomo and Civic Tower it has been included since 1997 in the list of Italian UNESCO World Heritage sites. The square is located on the south side of Duomo; on the eastern side of the square stands Palazzo Comunale, a seventeenth-century arcade building that has combined the ancient Medieval buildings of Municipality and Ragione. On the western side of the square is the rear part of Archbishopric. In the north-eastern corner of Piazza Grande, very close to Palazzo Comunale, is Preda Ringadora, which in Modenese dialect means "Pietra dell'Arringa", a large rectangular marble boulder, more than 3 meters long, which was probably originally belonged to a Roman building. During the Middle Ages, Preda was used as a stage for speakers, but also as a place to perform death sentences and display corpses.