Palazzo Bassi Rathgeb: A Renaissance Civic Residence in Bergamo
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Venetian
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Elite Residence
On this page7 sections
History
Palazzo Bassi Rathgeb is a Renaissance civic residence in Bergamo, Italy, built during the sixteenth century. Its development reflects the rebuilding of Bergamo after the Republic of Venice took control of the city in 1428 and encouraged new construction and the renovation of decayed buildings.
Venetian Bergamo and the Casotti family
Venetian policies encouraged merchant and artisan families who had moved into the valleys to return to Bergamo. This process supported urban renewal and the growth of a prosperous commercial class. The palace emerged from four separate houses built over slightly more than twenty years, and its early history is closely tied to the Casotti de Mazzoleni family.
The brothers Antonello and Bertulino Casotti were merchants in woollen cloth who moved from Valle Imagna to Bergamo while expanding their business. Antonello’s sons, Paolo and Zovanino, commissioned two adjoining houses from the Renaissance architect Pietro Isabello. The buildings stood on gardens purchased by their cousin Zovanino Casotti in 1507.
By 1514, a house newly built by Zovanino and Bartolomeo was described as a “most beautiful house” and was at least partly habitable. When the family properties were divided, Bartolomeo received the new building, together with its rear courtyard, a small structure or space called the mazorino, and a long gallery extending toward the garden. This is the part now occupied by the diocesan museum. Zovanino received a section later incorporated into Palazzo Tasso, while Paolo Casotti built Palazzo Casotti at number 70 on Via Pignolo.
Later ownership and institutional use
Count Giovanni Mosconi owned the palace in the eighteenth century and rebuilt its frontage on Via Pignolo between 1736 and 1741. In 1891, ownership passed to the family of Alberto Rathgeb. The family donated the palace to the Diocese of Bergamo in 1972 in the name of Roberto Bassi Rathgeb, an art collector and critic.
Since 2000, the building has housed the Adriano Bernareggi Diocesan Museum, which moved there from Casa Fogaccia. Bassi Rathgeb’s collection was instead donated to the Municipality of Abano Terme for a museum bearing his name. Since 2018, some classrooms of the University of Bergamo’s Department of Humanities, Philosophy, and Communication have also occupied the palace.
Remains
Courtyard, portico, and loggia
The palace retains the complex character created by the incorporation of four originally separate houses. An entrance portal on Via Pignolo, framed by eighteenth-century rustication, has a wrought-iron grille and opens toward the internal courtyard. On the courtyard’s western side, a Renaissance portico has five arches resting on stone columns with capitals. Above it, a loggia has six shorter columns. The contrasting proportions of the two levels follow an arrangement common in sixteenth-century Bergamo.
Frontage and interior decoration
The front wall includes doors and windows made with decorated stone, belonging to the hall that separates this section of the building from the outer courtyard. Door decoration includes mythological scenes, among them the episode in which Cacus steals Hercules’ cattle. These works predate 1507. Other decoration consists of medallions showing Roman emperors, a woman, and a Moorish figure, following fashions associated with the fifteenth century.
The door leading to the hall later used as the museum bears the Casotti family coat of arms and the engraved initials “B C.” This has been interpreted as an indication that Bartolomeo may have held the palace alone for a period, although notarial documents consistently name both brothers. Their initials also appear on the family chapel in the church of Santo Spirito. The painters of the lunettes, semicircular fields used for painted decoration, are unknown. The artist responsible for the great hall is also unidentified, although the same painter is thought to have decorated rooms in the related Casotti house on Via Pignolo and the upper floor of Casa Fogaccia or the Arciprete.
Garden sculpture and adjoining palaces
The garden contains busts of Bartolomeo and Zovanino, shown in antique-style clothing. Donato Fantoni of Rosciano made the sculptures. Palazzo Bassi Rathgeb adjoins Palazzo Sozzi Vimercati on its western side and Palazzo Grataroli Marenzi on its eastern side.
Nearby sites
