Palazzo del Comune (Casa Lupi)

Acqui Terme's town hall is a private palace that became public by gift. The Lupi family had this palace on Piazza Levi built in the late seventeenth century; the city received it as a donation in 1910, and its council chambers still keep their eighteenth-century decorations, among them overdoors painted with views of Rome.

Why it matters

Every Italian town's government needs a stage, and Acqui Terme found an unusually elegant one. The municipal tourism portal records that the palace on Piazza Levi was built at the end of the 1600s by the Lupi di Moirano family, later passed to Abraam Levi, who gave it to the city in 1910 in the express hope — realised — that it would become the town hall. The building thus compresses three centuries of the town's social history into one facade: baroque private residence, Jewish civic philanthropy, and twentieth-century municipal seat. Its interiors retain elegant eighteenth-century decoration, and the portal singles out the sala della Giunta with its overdoors showing Roman views — scenes of the capital painted for a provincial salon that later became a council chamber. The town hall gives Piazza Levi its civic character alongside the neighbouring Palazzo Robellini.

What to notice

Examine the facade as a record of the building's evolving role: the portal notes that the tower and the Corso Roma facade date to the early twentieth century, physical evidence of the 1910 conversion to municipal use — the new public face added to an old private house. The surviving eighteenth-century rooms include the sala della Giunta's soprapporte, painted overdoors depicting views of Rome and bringing the Grand Tour's imagery into a Monferrato council chamber. The building stands at the junction of Piazza Levi and Corso Roma, between the medieval core and the modern town. Its neighbouring Palazzo Robellini shows how private palaces of different eras shaped the same square.

Context and history

The Lupi di Moirano belonged to the patrician families who dominated Piedmontese provincial towns in the decades around 1700, and their residence followed the baroque model of a piano nobile over service floors facing a public square. The house's later history took an unusual turn through the Levi family: Abraam Levi's 1910 donation — made in the hope the city would install its town hall there — reflects the prominent role of Acqui's Jewish community. The municipality accepted, adapting the residence to its new functions and adding the tower and Corso Roma facade in the early twentieth century to give the institution a civic presence. Behind the council chamber's doors, the eighteenth-century decorations survived the conversion, so that the sala della Giunta today keeps both its painted Roman views and its practical role in the city's government.