Palazzo Ducale

An inscription over the portal says it plainly: Petracone V Caracciolo raised this palace from the foundations in 1668. Three centuries later the ducal seat is the town hall of Martina Franca, and its long gallery — frescoed in 1776 by Domenico Antonio Carella with Arcadian courtiers, Ovidian myths and Bible stories — belongs to the public, free of charge.

Why it matters

The Ducal Palace is the largest civil monument of the Martinese baroque and the clearest statement of how far this inland Apulian town reached: its late-Mannerist facade consciously imitates Roman palazzi, and the municipal account notes the project was endorsed in Rome, citing Gianlorenzo Bernini among its backers. Built on the site of the medieval castle of 1388, it turned a fortress into a residence and declared the Caracciolo's passage from feudal lords to enlightened commissioners. Since 1928 it has been Palazzo di Città, linking the town's civic history with its baroque artistic heritage.

What to notice

The facade on Piazza Roma has Tuscan half-columns, carved military trophies and panoplies, an eighteenth-century wrought-iron balcony and corbels shaped as apotropaic masks. The original plan formed a U open to the countryside. Duke Petracone V completed the ground and mezzanine floors by about 1700; later wings include the D'Avalos wing of 1773, a nineteenth-century western range and a twentieth-century wing.

The Galleria is a suite of state rooms painted in tempera by Carella in 1776 for Duke Francesco III. The Sala dell'Arcadia depicts the Caracciolo court as shepherds beneath an Apotheosis of Hercules. The Sala del Mito includes scenes from Ovid, and the Sala della Bibbia depicts Tobia, Judith and Rebecca beneath the Victory of Good over Evil. The palace also includes the Sala dei Duchi with seventeenth-century portraits, the Sala degli Stemmi and the Ducal Chapel with its polychrome stone altar and eighteenth-century painted crucifix.

Context and history

The Caracciolo, lords of Martina from 1507, ruled until feudalism was abolished in 1806; the family's last descendant, Riccardo de Sangro, died in 1978 and donated the family archive to the town — it is kept in the Isidoro Chirulli library inside the palace. Giovanni Andrea Carducci, a Bergamasco architect resident in Martina, signed the original design. Francesco III completed the Galleria; his mother Isabella D'Avalos received the eastern wing. Carella (1721–1813), trained in Naples under Solimena, painted the gallery frescoes in 1776. The palace became the town hall in 1928 and later housed civic cultural institutions.