Palazzo delle Paure

The "Palace of Fears" earned its nickname from the tax offices it once housed. The neo-medieval building on Piazza XX Settembre now holds Lecco's gallery of modern and contemporary art, the Museum of Lecco Mountaineering and a photographic archive of the lake.

Why it matters

Palazzo delle Paure interprets Lecco's civic and cultural identity through its collections. The upper floors present the city's artistic and Alpine identities: a civic art collection running from eighteenth-century allegory to conceptual art, and a mountaineering museum devoted to the climbers who made the Lecco cliffs famous. The building itself carries the civic story, from customs house to tax office to museum, with its tower bearing the Visconti biscione that ties the lakeside to the history of the Duchy of Milan.

What to notice

The palace's neo-medieval facade is crowned by a rectangular tower, added around 1926 and bearing a marble crest with the Visconti serpent. The first floor hosts major temporary exhibitions. The permanent gallery on the second floor spans allegory to abstraction and includes works connected to local artists Tino Stefanoni and Alfredo Chiappori alongside donations and works linked to Enrico Baj, Giò Pomodoro, Lucio Fontana and Enrico Castellani; a graphics and photography section features Ugo Mulas and Mario Giacomelli. The third floor belongs to the Museo dell'Alpinismo Lecchese, which tells the story of the city's climbing pioneers through historic equipment and memorabilia with interactive stations. The Fototeca of the civic museum system preserves roughly 4,000 photographs and period postcards documenting the Lake Como landscape and the city's twentieth century.

Context and history

The palace began in 1905 as a customs and tax building on the lakeside, was demolished and rebuilt in 1916 in its present neo-medieval form, and long accommodated the Intendenza di Finanza, the land registry and the customs service — the source of the popular nickname "palace of fears", because it was where citizens came to settle their dues. The tower of about 1926 added the monumental Visconti reference to the waterfront. After restoration the building reopened as a museum venue in October 2012, hosting the municipal gallery's contemporary and photographic sections. The mountaineering observatory on the third floor opened in 2016. The palace is owned by the Comune di Lecco and is part of the city's civic museum system together with the city's other civic museums.