The Church & Piazza
Post date: May 04, 2014 5:0:47 AM
The Church & Piazza
The presence of a Church is an extremely vital aspect of the function Italian society. Churches are an obvious link to Italy’s involvement with the Catholic Religion, not to mention its political aspect and services to the general community. Italian Churches are mainly centrally located and placed near parks or piazza’s, making them idle meeting places.
It is for these reasons that when Italians first settled in San Francisco, a church with a piazza soon followed. However, Saints Peter and Paul Church was put there not by the people but by the Catholic establishments in Italy to remind the Italian people to not forget their religious heritage. At the time of the Gold Rush, North Beach was filled with bars and brothels, and was actually a rather vulgar and untaught community. Thus, the Church was placed there to bring some sense and order back to the Italian people. Like in Italy, this piazza outside of Saints Peter and Paul Church serve as a meeting and hang out spot for the surrounding neighborhood. With its open field, benches and constant crowd of people, it is a very lively place. Because of its accessibility and business, it also serves as the perfect spot for the statue of Benjamin Franklin and the Earthquake memorial. The Firefighter Memorial statue was dedicated to those who served in aiding the city of San Francisco during and after the earthquake of 1906. Still there today, the memorial serves as an attraction to tourists and a reminder of the past to those who live in the area.
The Church and the piazza together, surrounded by the several bakeries, restaurants and boutiques makes one feel as if they could be in Italy. However, walking from the piazza into the Church, makes one question whether they are in the United States at all. With its beautifully architected high ceilings, large yet intricate marble statues and structures, and rows after rows of artisan crafted wooden benches, the Saints Peter and Paul Church is a pure bite of Italy.
With the constantly decreasing number of Italians living in Italy and the slowly progressive increase in Chinese neighbors, one would question the survival of Italian society in North Beach. Nevertheless, the presence of fundamental Italian structures such as the Saints Peter and Paul Church, the piazza, and the businesses around them that North Beach is still a culturally rich aspect of San Francisco that makes it diverse.
January 23, 2012