Palazzo Doge Ferretto: A Baroque and Rococo Noble Residence in Genoa
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.1
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Genoese
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page12 sections
History
Palazzo Doge Ferretto is a noble palace in Genoa, Italy, built between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the Baroque and Rococo traditions. It stands in the city’s historic centre, near Palazzo Ducale and Piazza De Ferrari, and was commissioned as the residence of Doge Stefano Onorato Ferretti. In Genoa, a doge was the elected chief magistrate of the maritime republic, making Ferretti a former head of the Genoese state.
The palace was designed as both a residence and a setting for formal domestic life. Its six floors were assigned different functions, with the Piano Nobile, the principal ceremonial and residential level of a historic palace, occupying the second floor. This floor contained the doge’s apartments and the most important decorated rooms. Palazzo Doge Ferretto remains a residence, while its upper floors are used as private housing.
Remains
The surviving palace combines a vertically organized exterior with a sequence of entrance spaces, a grand staircase, and richly decorated rooms on the Piano Nobile. Baroque ornament and lighter Rococo decoration appear alongside Renaissance architectural elements, creating a building whose external design and interior spaces reflect several phases of Genoese artistic practice.
Exterior and entrance sequence
Painted facade
The fully painted facade is arranged in six vertical bands and has a strongly symmetrical composition. Frames surround the windows, while columns stand between them, often corresponding to the internal walls. These Renaissance features are joined by a classical trabeation, the horizontal arrangement above columns formed by an architrave, frieze, and cornice. The painted decoration revives elements used in Genoa from the sixteenth century onward.
The principal entrance is set to one side rather than at the centre of the facade. A series of painted niches emphasizes the doorway, giving it the appearance of a richly columned temple. This painted architectural treatment forms the exterior approach to the palace’s internal circulation spaces.
Atrium and grand staircase
A seventeenth-century arched doorway opens into an atrium measuring 2.50 metres wide, 9 metres deep, and 5 metres high. It has a stone floor and a lunette-vaulted ceiling, a barrel vault interrupted by curved vault sections. Two flights of the grand staircase begin here and rise toward the Piano Nobile.
The atrium and stairwell have monochrome plastered walls without frames. Above the stairwell, a cross vault, formed by the intersection of two vaults, is supported by moulded corbels. Four sixteenth-century internal portals open onto this space. They are made of worked black stone and enriched with classical mouldings.
Ceremonial rooms and painted interiors
Sala dei Leoni e delle Stelle
The Sala dei Leoni e delle Stelle served as the Ferretti family’s reception hall. Its name refers to the family coat of arms, which shows a lion and three stars. The rectangular room is the largest and brightest space in the palace, reaches 7 metres in height, and has five large windows.
Its stucco ceiling is finished with details in 24-carat gold leaf. Stars, lions, garlands, and intertwined festoons fill the decoration, while four diamond-shaped motifs occupy the corners, each with a shell at its centre.
Sala del Concilio degli Dei
The Sala del Concilio degli Dei lies between the Sala dei Leoni e delle Stelle and the Sala degli Specchi. It is the palace’s most extensively frescoed room. Traces of two former doors in the walls suggest that the space may initially have been conceived as a gallery.
Paolo Gerolamo Piola painted the ceiling fresco, showing Zeus surrounded by other gods. Zeus is the principal god of ancient Greek mythology. The monochrome walls carry groups of figures, coats of arms, and banners, extending the room’s mythological and heraldic decoration beyond the ceiling.
Sala degli Specchi
The Sala degli Specchi is principally Rococo in character. Its original antique mirrors have been lost and replaced by an installation of contemporary art. Four corner cameos portray the palace’s ladies, supporting the interpretation that the room was once used as a dining room.
Pale pastel walls are enclosed by mouldings, and panels above the doors depict the four seasons. In the ceiling corners, shields, weapons, arrows, and other symbols are tied together by gold ribbons and bows.
Sala dello Scrigno
The Sala dello Scrigno takes its name from the damask curtains that protected its interior decoration from the outside environment. The curtains also created a more intimate and sheltered character within the room.
Sala di Venere
The Sala di Venere stands beside a secondary entrance to the Piano Nobile. The attribution of its ceiling painting is uncertain. The decoration appears to have been produced in different phases and later underwent several restorations, especially around the central oval fresco of Venus with Cupid. Venus is the Roman goddess of love, while Cupid is her associated god of desire. This central image is later than the room’s other decoration.
Gilded stucco frames give the room a predominantly Baroque character. The monochrome walls are enclosed by linear motifs and floral friezes, producing a decorative setting for the painted ceiling.
The Galleria
The Galleria is a completely frescoed corridor. Its decoration repeats the crown-and-lion motif of the Sala dei Leoni e delle Stelle, with the lion appearing between the supports of the crown. Flowers spread across both the ceiling and the walls.
The corridor retains its original floor from the palace’s construction. It is made from an inlay of marble and slate, providing a durable surface within the richly painted circulation space.
