Plaza

The plaza mayor of Valladolid, Spain, a prototypical Spanish plaza

The plaza of Costilla, Taos County, New Mexico, 1943

for the hotel, see Plaza Hotel

Plaza (IPA /'plaθa/ or /'plasa/) is a Spanish word related to "field" which describes an open urban public space, such as a city square. All through Spanish America, the plaza mayor of each center of administration held three closely related institutions: the cathedral, the cabildo or administrative center, which might be incorporated in a wing of a governor's palace, and the audiencia or law court. The plaza might be large enough to serve as a military parade ground. At times of crisis or fiesta, it was the space where a large crowd might gather. Like the Italian piazza, the plaza remains a center of community life that is only equalled by the market-place.

Most colonial cities in Spanish America were planned around a square plaza de armas, where troops could be mustered, as the name implies, surrounded by the governor's palace and the main church.

A plaza de toros is a bullring.

The Italian cognate is Piazza, the French cognate Place.

Examples

Shopping center

The first purpose-built shopping center in the United States, opened in Kansas City, Missouri in 1922, knowingly took the name of "Country Club Plaza" and adopted Spanish architectural details. More recently plaza has been used to describe a shopping complex, similar to a shopping mall, borrowing its connotations of a center of cultural life. The name is currently even applied to a single building with some semi-public street-level areas, often with a hotel or office tower above, while mall more often refers to multiple buildings or a street.

Examples: Pantip Plaza, Clinton Plaza, Central Plaza, Hong Kong, Schiphol Plaza.

Fictional example: Nakatomi Plaza (in real life, Fox Plaza).

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