Palazzo d'Accursio

Bologna's Palazzo d'Accursio grew around the house of the thirteenth-century jurist Accursio and has served as the seat of city government since 1336. Its connected buildings preserve civic rooms, artworks and architectural layers beside Piazza Maggiore.

Why it matters

The palace developed as an accumulated complex rather than a single planned building. Its long civic history can be read through changes made under communal, papal and modern municipal government. The complex also includes the Collezioni Comunali d'Arte and Sala Borsa, the city's multimedia library, linking political history with cultural and public life.

What to notice

The sixteenth-century cordonata, attributed to Bramante, leads into the palace. In the Sala d'Ercole, Alfonso Lombardi's 1519 glazed-terracotta Hercules and Hydra carries a political association with the fall of the Bentivoglio. Francesco Francia's Madonna del Terremoto is an ex-voto painted after the 1505 earthquake. The Cappella Farnese anchors the sequence of state rooms, while Sala Borsa's glass floor reveals archaeological remains beneath the library.

Context and history

In 1287, the commune acquired the houses of Accursio and neighbouring properties. The block also served as a grain store, giving one wing the name Palazzo della Biada. Further acquisitions and rebuilding brought the complex into use as the seat of government by 1336. A clock and wooden carousel of automata were added to the Torre d'Accursio in the mid-fifteenth century; the city removed the figures in 1796. Papal legates added apartments and a chapel. After Italian unification the complex became fully municipal, and the former grain-hall wing reopened as Sala Borsa in 2001.