Piazza IV Novembre is located in the historic center of Perugia, and as Serafino Siepi wrote, "it is the most beautiful and the most venerable square of the city and center of it."
The asymmetric square opens to the convergence of the five roads that structure the medieval city and its scenery represented in every epoch the privileged place of urban functions: here was placed the ancient forum and Etruscan-Roman monuments are still preserved.


In the tenth century the episcopal headquarters were transferred to the new church of San Lorenzo, and the square has qualified as an area representative of the political-religious role, confirmed subsequently by the setting up of the buildings of the municipal government.


The current structure has been defined with the restructuring of Plataea Comunis or Magna (the space between the Cathedral and the modern Republic Square), commissioned by the City and implemented between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, according to a precise urban project aimed at redevelop the acropolis of the town, the center of the collective life of the municipal corporation. The intervention focused on the enlargement of the Cathedral of St. Lawrence and on the building of the Palazzo dei Priori. The square changed its appearance in 1591 when the papal legate Domenico Pinelli opened a new and wider access road (modern Via Calderini). The urban scene is characterized by the natural contours of the land and the major monuments of the city facing the square.