This study takes Plaza Oriental, at the foot of the Roman aqueduct in Segovia, Spain, as its object. The square lies at the entrance threshold of the World Heritage historic urban area, where the four forces of heritage conservation, tourist pressure, traffic organization, and residents' everyday life overlap and compete. The traffic-oriented demolitions of the twentieth century stripped the aqueduct from the urban fabric into which it had originally been woven, isolating it upon an empty site lacking boundary or functional definition; the square thereby degenerated into a single sightseeing-and-photography place with the aqueduct as a backdrop, while everyday public life was continually crowded out.