Palazzo Comunale di Clusone

Clusone's town hall is a frescoed arcaded complex whose oldest documented fabric, six heavy stone arcades, belongs to the eleventh century. Grown wing by wing through the sixteenth, it wraps a courtyard beside the clock tower and still houses the municipal offices, and remains the working seat of the town's government.

Why it matters

Few municipalities in the Lombard valleys conduct business inside a monument of this depth. The regional heritage catalogue describes a courtyard complex of two main three-storey wings joined by two secondary wings, with six massive arcades of the eleventh century at the base of the south wing, medieval pointed windows above them, and construction spanning the eleventh to the sixteenth century. The local tourism portal traces the palace to a defensive residence of Clusone's lords around the year 1000. The building expresses the plateau's civic history in stone and paint and retains its institutional function.

What to notice

The south wing combines six deep stone arcades, traces of pointed medieval windows and painted decoration. The complex is richly frescoed, with exterior paintings that document periods in Clusone's history. An eighteenth-century portal opens from Piazza Sant'Andrea; the first-floor loggia is open on both sides. In the courtyard, large arcades in the north wing were later filled in, and two external staircases rise to the loggia. The complex includes the tower carrying Fanzago's astronomical clock.

Context and history

The complex began, by the local tourism portal's account, as a fortified residence of the lords of Clusone around the year 1000, and the eleventh-century arcades recorded by the regional catalogue are its oldest surviving fabric. As the community organised itself as a commune, the residence passed to public use, and the buildings grew: wings were joined, floors were added, and the tower that had served defence became the base for the planetary clock of 1583. Under Venetian rule, when Clusone belonged to the terraferma state, the painted facade tradition that marks so many Veneto-Lombard town halls found its Clusonese expression, recording through successive campaigns the public life of the town and the families who governed it. The regional catalogue, compiled for SIRBeC in 2007 and updated in 2010, registers the whole property as publicly owned, in office use, and structurally intact as a courtyard palace, reflecting its continuing municipal use.