the Foro Carolino commissioned was to be a monument celebrating the sovereign Charles of Bourbon. Work lasted from 1757 to 1765, and the result was a large hemicycle, tangent to the Aragonese walls, which incorporated the 17th-century Port’Alba to the north and flanked the church of San Michele to the south. The building, with its two characteristic curved wings, features twenty-six statues representing the virtues of Charles at the top, and in the center a niche that would have housed a statue of the sovereign, and a clock tower, of later date; it now forms the entrance to the Vittorio Emanuele National Boarding School. In the center of the square, stands a large white statue of Dante Alighieri (from 1871, the work of Tito Angelini), now set between the glass windows of the subway line 1 exits. The square was redesigned, refurbished and redecorated just as work on the subway was completed in 2002.
