The square was created during 11th century with the Bishop's Palace (1046) in the pratum regium (king's meadow), a piece of earth seat of the city market. The building was transformed in the 13th century and again in the 16th and 18th century. Opposite this Palace, the Cathedral, whose existence is reported in a document dated 1092, closes the square on the eastern side. In 1169 the walls included the square and in 1196 the work for the Baptistery began. It will take one century to complete it.

Inside the Cathedral we can see Benedetto Antelami's masterpiece: Christ being taken down from the cross, the most famous relief of the great medieval sculptor and architect.

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In the Baptistery the Antelami's sculptures depicting the Months are disAntelami's Monthsplayed in the recesses of the first loggia under the exceptional umbrella vault decorated in tempera work in the first half of the 13th century.

The Cathedral's naves are covered by frescoes of the Renaissance period whose apex is represented by the Assumption of the Virgin by Correggio painted in the dome, decorated between 1526 and 1530, the last masterpiece of the painter in the town where he had grown as an artist.

The square is, without any doubt, one of the most precious jewels of the Romanesque-Gothic art in Italy.