PIAZZA ARMERINA (Sicilian, Chiazza), a city of Italy, in the province of Caltanisetta, Sicily, on a hill 39 miles by road east-south-east of the city of that name, and 30 miles north of Terranova on the coast. It is a flourishing and populous place (17,038 inhabitants in the city and 19,591 in the commune in 1881), has an 18th-century cathedral, an episcopal palace, and a communal library (1859). The church of Sant’ Andrea, less than a mile distant, has a fresco of date 1486, and other objects of interest.

Of the ancient city, which old local antiquaries held to have been built by a colony of refugees from Plataea, little is known. The name sometimes occurs as Plutia. In 1095 Piazza was taken by Count Roger of Sicily, who bestowed on it a banner reputed to bear a likeness of the Virgin painted by St Luke. William I. destroyed the city in 1160, but it was rebuilt on a new site in 1163.

See Piazza antica, <tc., by J. P. Chiaranda (a native), of which a Latin translation by Mosheim is given in Graevius’s Thesaurus ant. et hist. Sic., vol. xii.