This is a medieval square, which housed the market around the 14th century. As the town grew, it was eventually displaced by other spaces that claimed to be the main square. Piazza del Sedile is the location of the Palazzo del Sedile, which used to be the administrative center of the city and the place where the local leaders and judges would hold court and listen to the citizens' complaints or render judgment in cases of dispute. The facade of the Palazzo borders the Southern side of the Piazza, the Conservatory the Western side, and a number of old buildings that today house shops and cafes, is the Eastern side. The Piazza is mostly for pedestrian, and only a few commercial vehicles are allowed through it, mostly for deliveries.

"Sedile" (which literally means "seat") is an Italian word that designates, through the physical function of "sitting", an administrative body carrying out its activity in a pre-established place, in which one sits down to deliberate: therefore it's more or less equivalent to "Council" or "Assembly". The word is widely used in the cities of southern Italy, and in the early modern era. The "seats" could be "dei nobili" (ie, of noblemens) or "del popolo" (ie, of middle and lower class). They could only be two; or more, as in Naples, where there were six "sedili dei nobili" (one for each neighborhood) and just one "del popolo" (which is also indicative of the balance of power inside the town). The Matera "sedile", to which this square alludes, is the ancestor of the modern city council. It's no by chance that here (and precisely in the building of the same name) the Town Hall was established, since the middle of the sixteenth century until 1944. The square therefore allows us to understand the "archeology of local power" in ancient Matera: to go back to an ancient time, in which the built form of the "Sassi" was already considered inadequate to represent the whole system of social relations into the city: the intention here is to show that those on the plateau anyway rule the city. Of course the majority of tourists ignores the original intentions of this urban space, and naively appreciates - through the category of "picturesque" - its volume. But it's good to know the genesis of a place to further understand the soul of a city; if this isn't done, this space, like others in the city, is largely misunderstood, and only provokes superficial feelings about what has been or has not been appreciated by the visitor.