Palazzo Attems Petzenstein

On Piazza de Amicis, the palace that the city's own heritage trail calls the finest in Gorizia fronts the old town with a baroque facade attributed to Nicolò Pacassi. Built for the Attems counts in the first half of the eighteenth century, it now guards the Pinacoteca of the Gorizia provincial museums.

Why it matters

Gorizia grew wealthy as the seat of a Habsburg provincial administration, and its noble families competed in stone. The Attems, the most powerful of them, raised this palazzo as the statement of that ambition. The regional tourism authority describes it as a work in a transitional register between baroque and rococò, and the municipal itinerary goes further, calling it probably the most beautiful palace in the city. Its designer, Nicolò Pacassi, came from a Gorizia family — reference works record his birth in Wiener Neustadt in 1716, to a stonemason father newly arrived from Gorizia — and his work ranged from this palace to the city's Neptune fountain and, at its summit, the Habsburg court.

The building matters for a second reason: it is where the city keeps its paintings. Since the provincial collections moved into the palace, its piano nobile has displayed the Pinacoteca, a gallery that ranges from Venetian settecento masters to twentieth-century names such as Tullio Crali and Luigi Spazzapan. The palace's rooms hold artworks from across the Isonzo area.

What to notice

The facade has a projecting central body flanked by two unequal wings and a stone balustrade. Seven statues crown the composition, carved by the Bergamo sculptor Giovanni Battista Mazzoleni and dedicated to subjects of Olympus; the official portal describes the ensemble as an elegant balustrade decorated with statuary.

The salon ceiling carries a canvas of the Olympian gods attributed to Antonio Paroli. The Italian-style garden contains the Fountain of Hercules, once located in the square before being moved there. The Attems coat of arms sits above the main balcony; behind the palace, Via Ascoli was the main artery of the old Jewish ghetto.

Context and history

The palazzo was built for the Attems family in the first half of the eighteenth century. The city's centro storico itinerary attributes the design to Nicolò Pacassi and dates the completion to around 1754; the regional tourism board records a neoclassical renovation in the first half of the nineteenth century so thorough that the facade's original features were lost beneath it.

The Attems remained the dominant aristocratic house of Gorizia under the Counts of Görz and then the Habsburgs, and their city palace stood at the centre of that world. In the twentieth century the building passed to public institutions and became part of the regional heritage system managed by ERpac, which houses the Pinacoteca. It is one of a pair of Pacassi-linked residences: the same circle of patronage produced the country villa of Sigismondo Attems, whose surviving garden is now the Parco dei Principi.