Palazzo Comunale con Loggia e Porta della Memoria

Gemona's Renaissance town hall pairs a graceful arcaded loggia, begun in 1502, with the Porta della Memoria, a monument-portal installed in 2006 to commemorate the town's reconstruction after the 1976 Friuli earthquake.

Why it matters

The Palazzo Comunale was raised in the early sixteenth century with stones taken from Gemona's collapsed castle. When the 1976 earthquake brought down its left wing, the town chose to take the surviving main body apart stone by stone and rebuild it as it had been. The loggia that resulted is both a fine work of Veneto-Lombard Renaissance design and the stage on which the Porta della Memoria, installed for the thirtieth anniversary of the disaster, tells the story of the "Modello Friuli" — the participatory reconstruction that became an international reference point.

What to notice

The ground-floor loggia has three round arches built by stonemasons from Cividale, perhaps the same masters who worked on their city’s cathedral. On the south wall are two older fragments of Gemona: a Roman epigraph, possibly of the second century AD, honouring Caio Mazio, a local notable who served the municipality as curator and patron, and a white-marble bas-relief of Mercury with modelling reminiscent of Hellenistic work. Painted metopes on the open-timber ceiling alternate figures, heraldic devices and the arms of Gemona’s noble families.

On the north wall, two commemorative slabs designed by Raimondo D'Aronco in his youth flank the portal to the council chamber. The Gemona-born architect later became known for his Liberty-style work. The council-chamber door is recent, part of the same act of remembrance as the adjacent Porta della Memoria, a monumental work installed in 2006 by Gemona artist Ercole Emidio Casolo. Four panels, eight inscriptions and eight pilaster strips narrate a single decade, from the tremors of 1976 to the completion of reconstruction. The portal leads into the Sala Consiliare, from which the town’s reconstruction was directed.

Heraldry around the stairway and windows includes the communal coat of arms and those of the noble Elti, Franceschini, de Bruni and de Cramis families.

Context and history

Gemona's first communal palace stood in the borgo Portuzza from the twelfth century, combining council chambers with a goods warehouse. The building you see today was begun in 1502 from a design by Bartolomeo de Caprileis, an Udinese architect known as Bòton, and its construction doubled as an act of recycling: the squared stones of the collapsed castle were carried down and reused. The three arches of the loggia, the upper trifora with its balcony and the coffered council hall follow the models of mainland Venetian provincial architecture, softened by Lombard-inflected decoration.

The earthquake of 6 May 1976 collapsed the left-hand part of the palace. The main body was dismantled and rebuilt between 1978 and 1981, largely by reassembling the original materials, a technique known as anastylosis. Installed thirty years after the earthquake, the Porta della Memoria commemorates the reconstruction, known as the "Modello Friuli" and studied abroad as an example of public participation and institutional action.