Complesso Monumentale del Broletto

Four palaces built across five centuries enclose the civic heart of medieval Novara. The Broletto comprises the Arengo, Podestà, Paratici and Referendari palaces around a courtyard off the main square, and continues to serve as a cultural centre, with the city's modern art gallery, exhibitions and restored frescoes in the Arengo hall.

Why it matters

The Broletto is Novara's communal palace, the seat of city government from the age of the free communes onward. Unlike a single monumental town hall, it is a cluster: four buildings raised at different times, with mismatched architecture that records how the commune actually grew. The Palazzo dell'Arengo dates to the twelfth century, the Palazzo dei Paratici to the thirteenth, and the Palazzi del Podestà and dei Referendari to the turn of the fifteenth century, with an eighteenth-century loggetta added to the Paratici. Today the complex keeps working for the city: its courtyard and halls support cultural use, and its walls contain recovered medieval painting and a modern art collection.

What to notice

The twelfth-century Arengo contrasts with the later Gothic-influenced palaces; an eighteenth-century loggia on the Paratici shows how the medieval fabric was adapted. The Sala dell'Arengo preserves detached frescoes from churches in the surrounding territory. The Galleria d'Arte Moderna Paolo e Adele Giannoni houses late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Italian paintings, including works by Fattori, Morbelli, Casorati and Segantini, together with the Cassietti bequest.

Context and history

The complex grew from the twelfth century as the commune of Novara asserted itself between empire, city rivals and later dynasties. Each palace answered a need of communal administration: the Arengo for the assembly, the Podestà's residence for the appointed chief magistrate, the Paratici for the guilds, the Referendari for later offices. Successive political regimes — Visconti and Sforza domination, Spanish rule, the Savoy state — reused the buildings rather than replacing them, which is why the architecture is deliberately heterogeneous. The complex lost its administrative role when newer government seats took over, and in the twentieth century it was restored and given over to culture, with the civic modern art gallery installed in its rooms and the courtyard integrated into the pedestrian centre between the cathedral and the castle.