Piazza del Duomo is L'Aquila's main public square and the heart of the historic centre — a broad, generous space lined with arcaded palaces and dominated at the far end by the cathedral of Saints Massimo and Giorgio. The piazza hosts a daily market in the mornings, as it has done since the city's medieval founding. The combination of market activity, the archways of surrounding buildings, and the mountain air gives it a character distinctly its own.
The cathedral facade, though damaged by the 2009 earthquake (the interior is still undergoing restoration), retains its 18th-century Baroque front. The piazza as a whole shows the layered history of the city: medieval foundations, Renaissance modifications, Baroque facades, and post-earthquake scaffolding now giving way to restored stone. Standing here and looking at the mountains framing the end of the valley on a clear day explains immediately why L'Aquila was worth building in this difficult upland site.