Palazzo Baronale Orsini (Palazzo Comunale)

Anguillara Sabazia's town hall began life in 1502 as an Orsini statement of power beside the castle gate. Restorations brought to light frescoes from the 1530s: a naval commander's exploits on the Loggia, putti teasing bears overhead, and a council chamber dressed as an epic of the sea.

Why it matters

This is a rare case of a painted Renaissance interior surviving inside a working municipal building. The palace went up in 1502 for Carlo Orsini, son of Gentil Virginio Orsini senior, lord of Bracciano, on the structures of the earlier Palazzo degli Anguillara, and it remains the seat of the Comune today. During restorations in 1978 and again in 2000, decorators uncovered fresco cycles dated 1535-39 that had been hidden for generations. The regional portal Rete delle Dimore Storiche del Lazio lists the building among Lazio's historic residences; its state rooms include the Loggia, the Sala dei Putti and the Sala delle Cariatidi.

What to notice

The Loggia opens towards the lake and was the resting room of Count Gentil Virginio Orsini junior, commander of the papal fleet. Its ceiling and walls carry frescoes celebrating his deeds. In the Sala dei Putti, a coffered wooden ceiling with inlaid brackets sits above paintings on an uncommon black ground, where acanthus scrolls unwind and putti play with bears — the bear being the emblem of the Orsini. The Sala delle Cariatidi, now the council chamber, moves to a marine programme: the same count portrayed as Aeneas, illusionistic architecture, caryatids in chiaroscuro and a frieze of sea deities. The palace has an irregular plan stepping down the tufaceous slope on several levels, an eighteenth-century portal much altered, a two-ramp staircase climbing to the mezzanine, the piano nobile and the fortress garden. Recent surveys also identified three underground rooms — one framed by an arch of tufa blocks, a small sixteenth-century refuse room, and a hypogeum cut into red tufa.

Context and history

The building stands immediately inside the gate known as porta di Castello, attached to fortifications that the sources divide between the Anguillara and Orsini signories, and close to the remains of the Romanesque church of Sant'Andrea. Its construction in 1502 marked the Orsini consolidation of a fief the Anguillara family had held until the late fifteenth century. The fresco campaigns of 1535-39 belong to the generation of Gentil Virginio Orsini junior, whose naval career for the papacy supplied the imagery. Restorers in 1978 and again in 2000 revealed the painted rooms beneath later surfaces. The palace has since continued to serve as the municipal seat.