The large public space in front of Collegio Ghislieri was celebrated, in 1964, in a page by Cesare Angelini, who described it as “an arrhythmic and animated ballroom, which had found its harmonious completion through a centuries-old wisdom.“
The oldest, sixteenth-century square corresponded in width to the palace designed by Pellegrino Tibaldi’s façade. The western area, toward the church of San Francesco Grande, had an irregular profile, overlooked by private houses and, to the north, by the side wall of Collegio Castiglioni. Only at the end of the 17th century were clearance plans arranged for the access block to create a wider perspectival vision that would give prominence to the Pope’s statue and the College façade.
The large statue of Pius V giving his blessing arrived from Rome in 1696, but it was made four years earlier by the Ticinese sculptor Francesco Nuvoloni and the Roman founder Filippo Ferreri, as attested by the inscription at the bottom of the robe. On its base, made of Candoglia marble, alongside the dedications (HAERETICORVM OPPVGNATORI, TVRCARVM VICTORI) appear the names of the co-patrons — the marquis Pio and the brothers Michele and Raimondo Ghislieri — and of the prefect Pietro Beccaria. In the inscription, before the Pope’s name, a small insert had been prepared to allow the letter B. (beatus) to be changed to S. (sanctus) at the time of his canonization in 1712, an alteration that was never carried out.
From the same period, between the late 17th century and the early 18th century, also date the Virtues sculptures in the atrium, part of a broader late-Baroque renovation plan for the College, along with a project to complete the square that was meant to include two marble fountains adorned with sculptures depicting the rivers Po and Ticino.
The overall design of the square was clearly inspired, in its monumental sweep, by the great urban interventions of seventeenth-century Rome, first and foremost Bernini’s redesign of Piazza Navona and its fountains, but also the elliptical layout of St. Peter’s Square, anchored by the three linear focal points of the side fountains and the central obelisk. Dedicating the two smaller fountains to the personifications of the Po and Ticino rivers reflects a secular, celebratory iconographic program that complements the central tribute to the Pope’s memory, while also echoing the many ancient and modern examples of river-deity sculptures in public spaces. The resulting design established Piazza Collegio Ghislieri as a prestigious focal point for the eighteenth-century city, remaining unmatched in Lombardy until the urban redevelopment projects of the Neoclassical era.
It was precisely the monumental spaciousness of this new setting that must have favored the settling, at the head of the square, of the Minim friars of San Francesco da Paola: their church, built between 1708 and 1738, today forms its monumental backdrop together with the College’s white sixteenth-century façade, with which it enters into an almost dialectical contrast of forms and materials. An eighteenth-century proposal to renovate the façade is documented by a large canvas depicting a broad view of the square, showing the façade of the church of San Francesco da Paola and the statue’s base without the effigy of the pontiff.
In 1871, Piazza Collegio Ghislieri underwent major repaving by the Pavia municipal administration, which in 1877 also proposed converting the large space into a public garden with flowerbeds and plantings. The square nonetheless remained essentially unchanged from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, as shown in the well-known Risorgimento-era view by Francesco Trécourt depicting Piazza Ghislieri in the aftermath of the March 1848 uprising.
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