Palazzo del Merenda: Forlì’s Former Hospital and Civic Cultural Center
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 3.3
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Papal States
- Site type
- Civic
On this page10 sections
History
Palazzo del Merenda is an eighteenth-century historic building in Forlì, Italy, constructed in 1722 under a project by the friar Giuseppe Merenda to house the Casa di Dio per gli Infermi hospital. The institution was intended to become the city’s principal place for treating the sick, giving the building an important medical and civic role from its foundation.
Hospital foundation and expansion
The complex developed over several phases. Raimondo Compagnini built its monumental staircase between 1778 and 1783, the year of Giuseppe Merenda’s death. An adjoining church was consecrated by Bishop Mercuriale Prati and opened on 3 November 1798. In 1827, Giuseppe Pani created a new facade, giving the building a later architectural face while retaining its hospital function.
Further expansion took place in 1848, when the engineer Giuseppe Cantoni enlarged and completed the complex with buildings for foundlings and facilities for hydrotherapy, a form of treatment using baths and other water-based therapies. The institution continued to operate as a hospital until 1922, when the new Ospedale Giovan Battista Morgagni opened immediately behind it. The name Palazzo dell’Antico Ospedale, meaning “Palace of the Old Hospital,” arose after this transfer.
Library and civic collections
After the hospital moved, Palazzo del Merenda accommodated the municipal library, the civic picture gallery, and the civic museums. These institutions had previously occupied the Palazzo dei Signori della Missione. The building now includes the Aurelio Saffi municipal library, the Antonio Santarelli Archaeological Museum, the Albicini Armory, and parts of the Romagnol Ethnographic Museum “Benedetto Pergoli.”
The library’s holdings began partly with books that Count Marcantonio Albicini had left to a seminary. After the seminary rejected them, Pope Clement VII gave the books to the city. The collection grew when books from monastic libraries were added following the dissolution of the monasteries in 1803. Purchases and donations later increased its size and made systematic organization necessary. The naturalist and priest Cesare Majoli arranged the volumes, followed by the librarians Pierpaolo Pasquali, Ulisse Pantoli, Don Domenico Brunelli, and Count Filippo Guarini.
Armory and university use
The Albicini Armory was donated to Forlì by the city’s noble Albicini family and assembled in 1905. Much of it came from investigations carried out in Forlì’s old fortresses by the learned Marquis Raffaello Albicini and his son Livio. Its first inventory listed 410 objects. At least 100 more pieces were later added, bringing the collection to more than 500 objects, although subsequent additions were not all catalogued. Weapons from the Kingdom of Kongo were among specimens donated by Virginia Pedriali in 1958.
Since March 2013, Palazzo del Merenda has formed part of the University Campus of Forlì, serving as an urban transition between the city and the university. It houses the Aurelio Saffi Library and student clubs. A major redevelopment and restoration program has been underway since 2020. The work includes structural consolidation with steel beams, restoration of the main hall and former archaeological-museum spaces, recovery of the old library and monumental staircase, creation of a modern children’s library on the first floor, and a direct connection between Corso della Repubblica and the university campus.
Remains
Palazzo del Merenda is an eighteenth-century complex organized around the former hospital, its adjoining church, later service buildings, hydrotherapy spaces, and the interior collections now associated with the library and museums. Its surviving architectural elements combine the original medical institution with later additions and civic adaptations. The facade, entrance, monumental staircase, main hall, former archaeological-museum spaces, and old library are all included in the current restoration program.
Hospital complex and civic interiors
Former hospital and later service buildings
The former hospital is the principal body of the complex. Its later development included buildings for foundlings and spaces for hydrotherapy, added in the nineteenth-century expansion led by Giuseppe Cantoni. These elements preserve the building’s connection with changing forms of public medical care. Interior areas that once served the archaeological museum, together with the main hall and old library, are being recovered as part of the restoration and structural reinforcement of the palace.
Church, facade, and staircase
The adjoining church forms part of the hospital complex and entered use after its consecration in 1798. The facade created by Giuseppe Pani in 1827 contains a niche at the upper-right corner with a statue of Charity by the Ballanti Graziani brothers. At the entrance, Raimondo Compagnini’s monumental staircase is flanked by statues of Magnificence and Charity by Francesco Andreoli. These allegorical figures represent personified virtues, and the staircase is among the historic elements being restored.
Albicini Armory
The Albicini Armory contains weapons and protective equipment dating from the fifteenth century and later, most of them found within the territory of Forlì. The collection includes falchions, spears, halberds, iron maces, crossbows, cuirasses, mail shirts, sallets, kettle hats, morions, chanfrons, two-handed swords, cleavers, poignards, sabres, and firearms. A cuirass protects the torso, a mail shirt is made from interlinked metal rings, and a chanfron protects a horse’s head. The helmets include the sallet, the kettle hat, and the morion, a helmet with a high crest and projecting brim.
Among the notable pieces is an incomplete suit of armor that belonged to Brunoro II Zampeschi, a noble lord associated with Forlimpopoli. The armory also holds a two-handed sword traditionally attributed to Francesco Ordelaffi, the medieval lord of Forlì. Firearms include seventeen arquebuses and twelve additional barrels for long firearms. An arquebus is an early shoulder-fired weapon, while the shorter cavalry version was designed for mounted use.
Decorated firearms
The short cavalry arquebus known as “Sforza Pallavicino” probably originated in Brescia and dates to around 1580. Its stock is covered with finely engraved iron sheet decorated with spirals and satyr figures, while the handguard has openwork foliage. The name comes from the Hydra emblem and the motto “Utumque” of Sforza Pallavicino, Marquis of Cortemaggiore and Busseto and Venetian captain general on the mainland in 1559.
A pistol dated 1620 is attributed to the “Master of the Animal-Headed Vine Scrolls,” regarded as one of the leading Austrian arquebus makers of the seventeenth century. Its carefully carved stock contains branches surrounding curls, palmettes, flowers, and heads of monstrous or fantastic animals. Another well-preserved pistol, called “Acquafresca,” was made in 1695 by the Bargi gunsmithing family. The collection also includes a pair of long pistols from the Rhineland dated to 1610, decorated with inlays of mother-of-pearl, bone, and colored paste.
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