Piazza della Cisterna

The Cisterna is the town's living room: a slanting triangular square paved in brick, with the old public well at the centre and tower houses in five different shades of stone closing every side. There is no gap in the walls, so the square reads as an interior.

The slope is what makes it work photographically. Shooting from the low corner upward puts the well and the towers in the same frame; shooting from the top down uses the brick as a warm floor and keeps the sky out.

Light arrives late here — the towers keep the square in shade until mid-morning and put it back in shade early — so the flattering hours are around eight in the morning and after six, when the upper facades glow and the square below is even.

This is the busiest square in town between ten and five from April to October, with gelato queues at two corners. Before nine it is genuinely empty, which is when the well is worth photographing at all.