Palermo - Piazza Pretoria

The Piazza Pretoria close to Quattro Canti, reached by climbing a few steps from Via Maqueda, is dominated by a magnificent fountain, the Fontana Pretoria, constructed by the Florentine sculptor Francesco Camilliani and Angelo Vagherino in 1544-55 for an estate belonging to the viceroy Don Pietro de Toledo. He then decided he did not want it, and the Palermo city council purchased it in 1573. Since then it has stood at its present site, its dimensions of 133m/436ft in circumference and 12m/40ft in height spurning all recognised architectural principles. For a long time the naked male and female figures met with popular disapproval, and Goethe spoke derisively of the fantastic combination of human and animal figures as the "forerunners of the Palagonian fury".