Piazza
From Free net encyclopedia
A piazza is an open square in a city, found in Italy. The term is roughly equivalent to the Spanish plaza. Piazza has taken some slightly different meanings in Britain and in United States. In Ethiopia, it is used to refer to a part of a city. When the Earl of Bedford developed the first privately-ventured public square built in London, Covent Garden, his architect Inigo Jones surrounded it with arcades, in the Italian fashion. Aristocratic talk about the piazza was connected in Londoners' minds, not with the square as a whole but with the arcades, which were called the "piazzas".
In Britain piazza now generally refers to a paved open pedestrian space, without grass or planting, often in front of a significant building or shops.
In the United States, in the early 19th century, a piazza by further extension became a fanciful name for a colonnaded porch.
Piazza is also a very common last name throughout Italians and Italian-Americans. The name grew out of the region surrounding Venice, and large populations of Piazza reside in Calabria, Sicily, and Venice. Famous Americans known by the name Piazza include Catcher Mike Piazza.