Casa Antonelli

A medieval brick house on via Bini keeps its twin-light windows and a painted band that came to light only after the 1976 earthquake. Casa Antonelli shows how a private facade can carry a public history of catastrophe and careful repair.

Why it matters

Casa Antonelli is a merchant house on Via Bini, opposite Palazzo Elti. Its facade preserves the vocabulary of a late-medieval town house: an open loggia at street level, paired windows above and a horizontal painted band. The 1976 earthquake exposed interior frescoes with sacred and profane subjects.

What to notice

The three-arched portico, carried on a column and stout pillars, opens the ground floor; one arch has been lowered over time. Above rise four brick storeys, with paired mullioned windows framed in stone on the first and second floors. Between the second and third floors runs the painted band, uncovered after the 1976 earthquakes. The state heritage catalogue records that inside, once the quake had done its damage, frescoes emerged depicting both sacred and profane subjects, dated to the early fifteenth century, including a Magdalene and an enthroned Madonna attributed to a local painter. The official town itinerary describes the visible facade decoration as fourteenth-century work; the two datings sit close enough to suggest decoration executed around the turn of the fifteenth century, though no artist's name survives.

Context and history

Via Bini was the show street of medieval Gemona, porticoed so that market goods and pedestrians moved under cover between the cathedral square and the town hall. The Antonelli house took its present form within that world of trade and display: ground-floor arcade for commerce, fine windows for status, painting for advertisement and devotion. The 1976 earthquakes cracked the old town to its bones, and the years of rebuilding that followed had a scholarly side: as walls were opened and strengthened, restorers recorded and protected what they found, which is why the fresco band and the interior paintings are known and dated at all. The heritage record was compiled by the Soprintendenza in 1993 and updated in 2018; it lists the house as private property under the supervision of the regional heritage authority. The catalogue's photographs, taken before and after 1976, document both the damage and the recovery of the structure.