Palazzo Elti

Palazzo Elti began as the de' Cramis family residence, long accounted the finest house in Gemona, and after passing by purchase to a merchant family from Rauris near Salzburg it survived earthquake, was rebuilt, and now concentrates the town's memory in one building: museum, archive, library and a museum devoted to the rebirth of Gemona itself.

Why it matters

This is the building where Gemona keeps its civic identity. Under one roof operate the Museo Civico, with paintings and sculptures spanning the Venetian and Friulian Renaissance; the Archivio storico della Comunità; the Biblioteca Glemonense, the town's historical library; and the Museo della Rinascita, which records how the community answered the earthquake of 1976. The palace itself embodies that arc. Sources record that Emperor Frederick III lodged here in 1452 while travelling towards his imperial coronation in Rome, that the wealthy Helt family bought the house in 1519 and rose into the Friulian nobility as Counts of Rodeano, and that the 1976 earthquake destroyed the complex before its reconstruction returned it to public use. The palace also reflects Gemona's post-earthquake reconstruction and civic history.

What to notice

The Museo della Rinascita presents the reconstruction as an exercise in civic responsibility and solidarity.

Art-historically, the palace's name is attached above all to the "Madonna con Bambino" that Cima da Conegliano signed and dated 1496, an oil on panel of 89 by 68 centimetres whose cartouche reads "Johannis Baptistae Coneglanensis opus / 1496 adì primo avosto". The civic collection that surrounds it also holds works by Pellegrino da San Daniele and Pomponio Amalteo, together with the portraits of the Elti family and the Fantoni-Baldissera collection.

Via Bini is a medieval street sheltered by arcades; the palace faces the old Casa Antonelli across it.

Context and history

The house was built at the end of the fifteenth century by the de' Cramis family and was repeatedly altered over the centuries; the Ministry of Culture's card describes the palace as a construction of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and for a long time it was accounted the most beautiful residence in Gemona. The recorded visit of Frederick III in 1452 belongs to this tradition of the house as the town's principal lodging. In 1519 Andrea Helt, of a rich family of merchants from Rauris near Salzburg who had settled in Gemona, acquired the building; his descendants held city offices and in the second half of the seventeenth century were enrolled among the Friulian nobility with the title of Counts of Rodeano.

The earthquake of 1976 levelled the complex. Its reconstruction was the occasion for a new civic purpose: the Ministry records that the museum was instituted as a direct consequence of that rebuilding work, bringing together pictures that had reached the town from the Beata Vergine delle Grazie church, from the church of San Giovanni and from the Fantoni-Baldissera collection, alongside the original Elti portraits and later loans and acquisitions. The Museo della Rinascita later completed the programme on the second floor.