The city's main thoroughfare (Ruga Maistra) in the Venetian times is now known as the 25th of August Street.

Then, like now, it linked the port with the main square of the town and was lined with the finest buildings - the Loggia, the Palazzo Ducale and the Palazzo del Capitano. Towards the end of the 19th century, on the 25th of August 1898, one of the most tragic moments in the town's history, which was to signal the end of Ottoman rule on the island, happened here. This is how the street took its name.