Palazzo Gotico (Municipio)

Piacenza’s Palazzo Gotico, built for the city’s medieval commune, faces Piazza Cavalli. Its five-arch marble loggia supports a terracotta upper storey, and its unfinished form preserves the scale of the communal project begun in the early 1280s.

Why it matters

Piacenza’s merchant community established Piazza Grande in the early 1280s and planned a palace for the commune, a project championed by Alberto Scotti. The palace combines pointed arches, mullioned windows and battlements above a loggia of white and red marble. The Visconti takeover in 1313 interrupted the work, leaving the building incomplete. It later served as a setting for civic ceremonies and now houses the municipal council.

What to notice

The portico has five pointed arches along the main façade and three on each short side, with ribbed vaults. Above, the terracotta storey has round-arched frames around two- and four-light windows; the battlements were converted from square Guelph forms to swallow-tailed Ghibelline ones. Three small towers with mullioned windows crown the façade. The upper hall retains nineteenth-century frescoes of geometric motifs, coats of arms and allegories of Justice beneath a timber-truss roof. The bronze equestrian monuments by Francesco Mochi, dated 1620 and 1625, stand in the square that took its name from the horses.

Context and history

Under the Visconti, who took control in 1313, ducal troops occupied the palace and its communal role diminished. By the sixteenth century it hosted tournaments and other festivities, including a 1574 tournament for Giovanni d’Austria; it was converted into the Teatro di Piazza in 1646. Repairs by architect Lotario Tomba began in 1821. A medievalising restoration ran from 1856 to 1909, involving Giuseppe Mengoni and concluding under Ernesto Pirovano. In 1469 the Sforza had repaved the square in a regular grid; its surface was renewed again in the late eighteenth century.