AN UNLIKELY comparison has been drawn with Venice city centre and an attraction in a town in Yorkshire. Anyone who hasn't had the good fortune to experience Venice can get pretty a similar taste of it in places dotted around the UK. Included in that is Halifax in Yorkshire , with its Piece Hall bearing a striking similarity to Saint Mark's Square in the famous Italian city.
The ornate town square was redeveloped within the last decade and now world renowned musicians and bands love putting on shows between its ornate walls. The artists are "clamouring to play there", according to promoter Peter Taylor, whose firm Cuffe and Taylor have put on high profile shows this summer including Sting, George Ezra and Madness. He told the BBC : "They want to play the Piece Hall over Manchester and Leeds - it's a date in the North.
Those who have performed at the hall have also drawn the comparison to Venice with Jessie Ware and James frontman Tim Booth both saying it's like playing on an open-air stage at an Italian piazza. While the likeness with Venice is an obvious one, the Piece Hall has also been hailed among some of the greatest town squares in the world, ranking alongside New York and Paris. That's according to Building Centre, who wrote: "Its courtyard is an architectural delight.
"It has been described along with others including Piazza San Marco in Venice, the Piazza del Campo in Siena, the Place des Vosges in Paris, and the Rockefeller Plaza in New York as one of the forty great.
