Palazzo Salis

Tirano's grandest noble residence never left the family that built it. Between two towers and a baroque portal executed to a design attributed to Vignola, Palazzo Salis unfolds ten frescoed halls where members of the Salis dynasty governed the Valtellina, an Italian garden closes the sequence, and sixteenth-century cellars stretch beneath.

Why it matters

The municipal heritage inventory calls Palazzo Salis the most important residence of the powerful Salis family in the Valtellina and the largest residential complex in the whole province of Sondrio, and a walk through its courtyards explains the claim. The Salis, a Grisons noble house settled at Tirano from the mid-seventeenth century, supplied the valley with twenty-five governors, forty-four podestà and sixteen vicars during the long period of Grey League rule, and the palace was built between 1630 and 1690 as the stage for that authority. Unlike many Italian stately homes, it has remained in the hands of the founding family, today the Counts Sertoli Salis, who since 2007 have opened it as a house museum. The palace offers a view into the political history of an Alpine borderland.

What to notice

The palace includes the frescoed courtyard of the sundial, the Corte della meridiana, and ten Baroque halls, among them the ballroom, the eighteenth-century Saloncello reading salon, the Sala dei Turchi and the Studiolo dell'Olimpo, where paintings and volumes are kept together. Its late-sixteenth-century facade, flanking towers and portal attributed to Vignola contrast with the Baroque interiors. An Italian garden and historic cellars, including an ice house that once stored winter snow for the kitchens, complete the complex.

Context and history

The family's story, told on the palace's own history pages, runs from the de Salicibus lineage that moved from the Como region into the Bergell valley in the early twelfth century to the Zizers branch that took root in Tirano around 1650. Marriage kept the line alive: when Count Ulisse Salis, a Risorgimento figure, left only a daughter, Rita, her union with the Sondrio patrician Francesco Sertoli created the Sertoli Salis name the palace carries today. Ulisse Salis the elder also designed the organ case in Tirano's collegiate church, reflecting the family's connections with the town. The twentieth century added a lighter chapter: Ulisse, lawyer and pioneer round-the-world traveller, photographed his journeys, and the exhibition I viaggi dello Zio Ulisse draws on those albums. The museum opened to the public in spring 2007 after restorations that returned the frescoes to view.