Palazzo del Podestà

Palazzo del Podestà stands between Piazza Matteotti, Piazza Fanti and Corso Cavour in Città di Castello. Completed in 1368, it combines a medieval facade with a seventeenth-century loggia and a Baroque front.

Why it matters

The palace was raised by Angelo da Orvieto and apparently commissioned by the Tarlati di Pietramala. Its ground floor combined shops with the prestige floors above: nine shops lined the street frontage, and a 1368 record notes rent paid to the commune. The use of smooth, squared pietra serena distinguishes the building from the neighbouring town hall.

What to notice

Along Corso Cavour, the surviving medieval facade has round-arched shop portals, faded friezes and the coats of arms of the Podestà who governed the city. Small round-headed windows sit above the doors, with mullioned windows under broad semicircular arches at the noble floor. The Piazza Matteotti front was rebuilt in 1687 by Nicola Barbioni in Baroque style. A loggia added around 1620 opens onto Piazza Fanti. The broad voltone passage crosses the block, and the facade has a compass-rose quadrant beside a double clock dial.

Context and history

The palace was completed in 1368, a few years after the town hall. The commune's annals record that it rented five of the nine ground-floor shops that year. Later changes included the Piazza Fanti loggia and Barbioni's 1687 facade on Piazza Matteotti. The original layout survives in fragments across the building’s three fronts.