Palazzo dei Capitani del Popolo

On the western side of Piazza del Popolo in Ascoli Piceno stands the Palazzo dei Capitani del Popolo, a civic building whose history spans seven centuries. Beneath its medieval rooms, archaeological excavations have revealed Roman remains at the crossing of the ancient decumanus and cardines.

Why it matters

The palace was a centre of civic authority under the commune, the Captain of the People and, later, papal governors. Excavations begun in 1982 exposed archaeological layers about 1.8 metres below street level, at the point where the Roman decumanus maximus met the side streets of Piazza del Popolo, once called Platea Maior. The site is presented by the municipality as the Marche's first musealised urban archaeological area.

What to notice

The palace has a crenellated tower and a 1546 portal by Lazzaro di Francesco, known as il Ferrone, with a statue of Pope Paul III in its niche. On Via del Trivio, the façade by Cola dell'Amatrice, completed in 1520, arranges classical orders above cross-mullioned windows. Inside, the Sala della Ragione retains twelve painted wooden ceiling panels recovered during the 1982–87 restoration; the Sala degli Stemmi preserves frescoed coats of arms of nineteenth-century papal governors. At ground level, the archaeological area presents twelve building phases and ceramics found on the site.

Context and history

The palace developed in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by joining three medieval houses. Documents call it the Palatium Populi and later the Palactium Communis et Populi. A late-fifteenth-century campaign extended it southward and added a floor. Cola dell'Amatrice designed the Via del Trivio façade in 1520. During the revolt of 1535, papal commissioner Giovan Battista Quieti ordered the building set on fire, destroying the commune's archives. Reconstruction included the Paul III portal in 1546 and a courtyard of loggias designed by Camillo Merli in 1549. Papal governors occupied the palace from 1563 to 1860; it passed to the Comune in 1902. The 1982 excavations revealed occupation of the site from the Republican Roman period onward.