Palazzo Taccò

Palazzo Taccò in Cormons is a late-seventeenth-century residence with a three-part atrium paved in pebbles and a decorated hall containing two large canvases of Habsburg history.

Why it matters

The palace combines an architectural design attributed, with some uncertainty, to Giovanni or Leonardo Pacassi with a decorative campaign of the 1730s. Its ownership passed through the Taccò, De Blunfeld, Visca and Aita families, reflecting the changing history of this border region.

What to notice

The façade is set back behind a small forecourt. Its windows follow a 2-3-2 rhythm, above a ground-floor band of exposed masonry. A round-arched carriage entrance leads into a three-bay atrium, where stone columns alternate with timber posts and beams and the central aisle is paved with pebbles. The residence also includes a chapel dedicated to the Madonna; a Taccò family chapel dedicated to the Immaculate Conception is documented here by 1703.

Context and history

The palace was built at the end of the seventeenth century over earlier houses near the present Piazza XXIV Maggio. In the 1730s its main hall received mythological stucco decoration and two large historical canvases by Johann Michael Lichtenreit, a Bavarian painter whose workshop was in Gorizia. Earlier scholarship attributed the stucco design to Nicolò Pacassi and its execution to Giovanni Battista Mazzoleni; a later study has re-examined those attributions and the possible role of the Attems-Petzenstein family. A painted sketch by Giambettino Cignaroli, once owned by the Taccò, is now in the provincial museums of Gorizia. The palace passed to the De Blunfeld family in 1897, to Alessandro Visca in 1922 and to the Aita family in 1943. Michele Formentini's 2006 monograph records its history.