Palazzo Tupputi Schinosa: A Renaissance Palace in Bisceglie
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Kingdom of Naples, Spanish
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page8 sections
History
Renaissance Origins
Palazzo Tupputi Schinosa is a Renaissance palace in Bisceglie, Italy, built near the former Zappino Gate during the second half of the sixteenth century. Its designer is unknown, while construction was probably commissioned by the Frisari counts, a family that originated in the Salerno area. The building is a notable example of Renaissance architecture in Apulia.
The Tupputi Residence
Around the middle of the eighteenth century, the palace was sold to the Tupputi marquises, who came originally from the Piacenza area. They converted it into their family residence and altered its principal rooms and exterior. The large windows of the piano nobile, the ceremonial upper floor of an Italian palace, were enlarged with balconies, and the internal courtyard was remodeled.
The Carboneria and the Dieta delle Puglie
During the Risorgimento, the nineteenth-century movement that led to the political unification of Italy, the palace housed the Carboneria, a secret revolutionary society active in Italy. On 5 July 1820, its ground-floor rooms hosted the Dieta delle Puglie, a historic meeting chaired by Marquis Domenico Antonio Tupputi. After liberal uprisings in the military garrisons of Nola and Avellino and an insurrection in Foggia, Apulian Carbonari agreed there to coordinated action in support of the Parthenopean Republic, the short-lived republican government established in Naples in 1799 during revolutionary upheavals associated with the French era.
Municipal Ownership and Restoration
After the Second World War, the Municipality of Bisceglie acquired the palace. Following many years of abandonment, it adapted the building for art exhibitions and conferences. The property is now undergoing restoration, after which several institutional offices, including the mayor’s representative office, are expected to be installed there. Its historical uses have therefore included a noble residence, a Carboneria meeting place, an exhibition venue, and a conference hall.
Remains
Street Facades
The palace occupies a corner between Via Cardinale Dell’Olio and Via Ottavio Tupputi in Bisceglie’s historic center. Its main entrance is a rectangular portal centered on the facade facing Via Cardinale Dell’Olio. The two facades are symmetrical and use contrasting surface treatments to divide the ground floor from the two upper levels.
The ground floor is covered with coursed rustication made from roughly hewn stone blocks. It contains the main entrance and shops, whose openings also use rectangular portals. A horizontal stringcourse marks the piano nobile and is interrupted by the brackets that support its small balconies. The two upper floors are faced with approximately 2,000 local-stone blocks cut into a diamond-point pattern. Above them, an entablature, the horizontal upper element of a classical facade, is capped by a projecting cornice.
The elegant wrought-iron balconies were added in the eighteenth century to enlarge the Renaissance windows. The balconies and the second-floor windows are framed by refined architectural surrounds. These later elements remain integrated into the palace’s Renaissance facade composition.
Courtyard and Interiors
An entrance passage leads into the internal courtyard. Beneath a barrel vault with curved lunette openings, the courtyard displays the coat of arms of the owning family. The elevation facing the courtyard extends across three levels of arcades, separated by columns of Numidian granite, a hard decorative stone historically quarried in North Africa and used in prestigious architectural elements.
The interiors contain richly decorated rooms. Together with the courtyard arcades, the entrance passage, and the stone facades, these spaces preserve the architectural character of a palace that was remodeled for the Tupputi family while retaining its Renaissance structure.
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