Piazzatorre is an Italian town of 444 inhabitants in the province of Bergamo, in Lombardy. Located in the High Brembana Valley, it is about 48 km north of the capital Orobico. It has a territorial area with an altimetry ranging from 850 m above sea level to 1,100 m above sea level.
It has always been commonly believed that the place name Piazzatorre derives from the union of the words square and tower, to mean the square of the tower, perhaps because in that place stood a tower surrounded by a clearing. If for the word square, stalls, the etymology is plausible, it is not so for tower. In fact, if this hypothesis were valid, in the most ancient Latin documents the word turris, turrim, turri should be used, depending on the declination.
It is therefore clear that the tower is not relevant to the etymology of the toponym Piazzatorre, which instead should be referred to the vocabolotorus or taurus, (understood as high ground or raised ground) which combined with stalls (square, forecourt) indicates raised forecourt, a flat area located on high ground, which is then the geographical characteristic of Piazzatorre.
Piazzatorre, today, is a winter and summer tourist resort, mainly frequented as a holiday resort and as a venue for pre-season training camps for sports teams.
Italian