Piazza Colonna Piazza Colonna Piazza Colonna is a piazza at the center of the Rione of Colonna in the historic heart of Rome, Italy. It is named for the marble Column of Marcus Aurelius, which has stood there since AD 193. The bronze statue of Saint Paul that crowns the column was placed in 1589, by order of Pope Sixtus V. The Roman Via Lata (now the Via del Corso) runs through the piazza's eastern end, from south to north. The piazza is rectangular. Its north side is taken up by Palazzo Chigi, formerly the Austria-Hungary's embassy, but is now a seat
The Piazza Tales to Melville's whaling years, during which he visited the Galapagos Islands, supplemented with material from his reading in at least six books of Pacific voyages, including "The Voyage of the Beagle" by Charles Darwin. A month after the collection was published, Melville's old friend Richard Tobias Greene, on whom Toby in "Typee" was based, wrote him a letter expressing how the Encantadas sketches "had called up reminiscences of days gone by". Assuming that "The Piazza" is Melville's own Pittsfield piazza, critic F. O. Matthiessen suggests that the piece must have been suggested by Hawthorne's manse. As the setting for the