Town Hall Square
The city became a bishopric in 1503, when the church of Santa Chiara was granted the status of cathedral. The bishop moved to live within the walls of Iglesias. Slowly the bishopric drew closer to that of Cagliari and remained attached to it, until 1763, when it again received full autonomy with the return of the bishop, which required the construction of a building to house it. The façade is a determining element of Piazza Municipio both in a spatial sense, as it delimits it laterally, and in a monumental sense. In fact, the square represents the city’s barycentre in which everything is played out on the symbolic significance of the buildings: it is no coincidence that the bishop’s palace flanks the town hall which, in a typical medieval urban layout, faces the cathedral.