Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II (Rome) also called Magic Gate or "Porta Magica"), the entrance to Villa Palombara, former residence of the alchemist Marquis Palombara. In Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette), it was in Piazza Vittorio that the protagonist Antonio Ricci and his young son Bruno seek desperately to recover his stolen bicycle, but realise the futility of their task as the vast square is filled with countless bicycles and bicycle parts that resemble his own. List of city squares by size Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II (Rome) Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, also known as Piazza Vittorio, is a piazza in Rome, in the
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