the.com/piazza
Italy's open-air living room, where doing nothing is the main event.
means A broad, open public square in an Italian town or city, usually ringed by buildings, cafés, and a church, built for strolling and standing around rather than traffic.
from From Italian piazza, descending from Latin platea meaning 'broad street' or 'open space,' which itself borrowed from Greek plateia (hodos) — 'broad (way).' The word fanned out across Europe wearing different clothes: French place, Spanish plaza, and English 'place' are all cousins from the same Latin root. English also grabbed 'piazza' directly from Italian, originally to describe actual Italian squares, though for a stretch English speakers oddly used it to mean a covered walkway or porch along a building — a sense now mostly faded back into its true meaning: the square itself.
- origin
- from greek plateia, meaning broad street
- purpose
- built for standing around, not traffic
- etiquette
- espresso at the bar costs less than sitting
- export
- gave english the word plaza