In pictures: Europe's car-free plazas reclaim their former glory
This article is part of The New Commute, a special report on urban mobility in Europe from POLITICO’s Global Policy Lab: Living Cities. Sign up here.
Few would argue that cultural heritage shouldn’t be preserved and protected — but that hasn’t stopped numerous cities from literally turning their iconic urban spaces into parking lots.
Across the European Union are countless examples of prized urban spaces being used as repositories for automobiles. In central Brussels, a 17th-century statue of Minerva overlooks a sea of parked cars that separate it from the medieval Church of Notre Dame du Sablon. Lille’s 500-year-old Rihour Palace is surrounded by vehicles, while people still park in Vienna’s imperial Heldenplatz. Even the Vatican’s Cortile del Belvedere — Bramante’s masterpiece of High Renaissance architecture — spends its days full of metal boxes.
For more than 80 years activists have worked to get local leaders to liberate public spaces degraded by parking spots. Small Italian cities like Siena, which banished cars from the Piazza del Campo in 1962, were among the first; just four years later major capitals like Madrid were following suit, kicking cars out of public squares including the Plaza Mayor.
