Piazza San Michele is the main square of Albenga's old town, flanked by the cathedral on one side and the medieval civic buildings on the other. The square has served as the social and commercial centre of the town for over a thousand years. The adjacent Piazzetta dei Leoni — named for three stone lions brought from Rome — opens to the north of the main piazza and contains the Palazzo Vecchio del Comune with its base of black stone.
The square and its surroundings are the best place to understand Albenga's medieval layout: the compact grid of narrow lanes, the surviving tower-houses rising above the roofline, and the extraordinary early Christian baptistery standing directly beside a Gothic cathedral. Cafes on the square provide a base for taking it all in.