Palazzo Assessorile: A Medieval and Renaissance Palace in Cles, Italy
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Civic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page20 sections
History
Palazzo Assessorile is a medieval and Renaissance building in Cles, Italy, whose original tower was built around 1200 and later incorporated into a palace combining northern Gothic and Venetian elements with Renaissance decoration. Located in the historic center between Corso Dante and Piazza Granda, it developed from a communication post and food storehouse into the seat of local justice, municipal administration, and cultural activities.
The medieval tower
The first written reference to the building dates to 2 May 1356, when Iosio di Enrico di Sant’Ippolito, lord of Mechel, purchased a tower house and its enclosing wall from Giovanni di Arpone of Cles. The structure itself was older. Its tower had been erected around 1200 over the archaeological foundations of an earlier comparable building.
The original tower was a fortified square-plan structure of three floors. It served as a visual communication post and as a place for storing food supplies. Its elevated entrance was reached by a ladder, while the ground floor functioned as a cellar and pantry. This lower level could also be used as a prison or cistern, and access was possible through a trapdoor in the floor.
Damage and late-fifteenth-century rebuilding
The tower suffered serious damage during the peasant revolts of 1407 and 1477. The same unrest destroyed Sant’Ippolito castle at Mechel. The property later passed to the noble de Cles family and became the seat of the Captain of the Noce Valleys, an official responsible for authority in the surrounding valleys.
Giorgio de Cles undertook a comprehensive rebuilding that absorbed the medieval tower into the present palace. The work was completed in 1484, when the de Cles coat of arms was painted in fresco on the facade. The enlarged building became a substantial three-story residence with Gothic openings and defensive details inherited from its earlier form.
Renaissance ownership and decoration
In 1538, Bernardo Clesio, Prince-Bishop of Trent and a cardinal who combined ecclesiastical authority with a major regional political role, bequeathed the palace to his nephew Ildebrando. Ildebrando was a knight and imperial nobleman, Captain of the Noce Valleys, and, since 1529, the husband of Anna Wolkenstein. Their ownership brought the Renaissance decoration that continues to define the palace interiors.
When Ildebrando left the palace to Anna Wolkenstein in 1551, she initiated the final stage of the decoration on the third floor. The rooms commissioned during this period express the interests, family identity, and social position of their patrons through mythological figures, heraldic imagery, allegories, inscriptions, and scenes of courtly life.
Judicial and civic use
The palace passed briefly to the Thun family during the seventeenth century. The Thuns sold it to the Magnifica Comunità di Cles on 30 December 1677. Its function then changed from noble residence to administrative and judicial center.
An inscription dated 1679 above the Gothic portal states that the people of Cles acquired the building to provide a permanent location for the assessorial court. The assessors were legally trained officials who administered justice in the Non and Sole Valleys on behalf of the Captain and, indirectly, the Prince-Bishop. Their work followed the statutes of 1407. The palace also contained prisons, giving the building both judicial and custodial functions.
In 1814, during the Napoleonic period, the third floor was formally converted into a prison. It remained in use for this purpose until 1975. During the twentieth century, pressure from art-protection authorities led to the transfer of judicial functions to the eighteenth-century Palazzo Dal Lago de Sternberg opposite. Palazzo Assessorile subsequently served first as the town hall and seat of the municipal council, and later as a venue for conferences and art exhibitions. It is now used for art exhibitions.
Uncovering and conserving the palace
The frescoes were first uncovered and restored during a campaign in the early twentieth century. A comprehensive restoration of the palace was completed in 2009, preserving the building’s medieval fabric, Renaissance interiors, and evidence of its later institutional uses.
Remains
Medieval tower and palace exterior
The original tower remains clearly legible from ground level through the second floor. Its perimeter walls survive within the later palace, with a stone angle visible on the west side and a distinct masonry texture apparent inside. Two loopholes beside the staircase preserve part of its defensive character.
The tower was supported by stone and wooden corbels and crowned by Ghibelline crenellations, the swallow-tail battlements historically associated with imperial political allegiance in medieval Italy. Its raised entrance, ladder access, cellar, pantry, and trapdoor reflect the practical and defensive organization of the early structure.
Facade and defensive features
The late-fifteenth-century expansion created a massive three-story palace. Its facade combines windows with pointed trefoil-arched biforate windows, each divided into two openings and framed by capitals with vegetal decoration. An elegant pointed portal provides the principal entrance. The biforate windows match those on the facade of Castel Casez in Sanzeno.
The two central biforate windows on the second floor frame a doorway made of red stone. An identical doorway on the first floor leads into the room occupying the former tower, now known as the Sala della Colonna. On the right side of the facade, between two biforate windows, the trace of a sundial survives with only its gnomon, the projecting element that cast the shadow, still in place.
The upper facade retains medieval crenellations, keyhole-shaped loopholes, and nose-shaped machicolations beneath the eaves. These were defensive openings or projecting structures used to observe or attack those below. A small tower on the north side adds another medieval element to the exterior.
Second-floor interiors
The second-floor rooms contain frescoes by Marcello Fogolino, a prominent Trentino artist known for decorating aristocratic and ecclesiastical buildings. His work uses vegetal forms to frame mythological figures, allegories, and heraldic designs. The rooms combine a coherent Renaissance decorative language with distinct programs suited to their individual functions and names.
Sala del Giudizio
The Sala del Giudizio, also called the Baronial Hall or Council Hall, contains a frescoed allegory of Friendship and other moralizing figures. The principal wall presents a program centered on Diana, who is associated here with light, the forests, and chastity. Nereids, cupids, satyrs, tritons, and putti fill the surrounding decoration, together with numerous Greek and Latin inscriptions. Among them are the words taedet animam meam, the lament of Job.
Salotto del Balcone
The Salotto del Balcone receives light through a small portal and paired biforate windows. Its 1543 grotesque decoration, a Renaissance ornamental style combining plants, animals, human figures, and fantastic creatures, is centered on animals associated with Bacchus, the classical god linked with wine. Goats, wolves, and winged dragons appear among vegetal tendrils, which end at either side in satyrs crowned with ivy. The de Cles rampant lions occupy the center of the composition.
Stanza dell’Erker
The Stanza dell’Erker was frescoed between 1560 and 1580 by an artist from the Fogolino school. Its four lunettes represent the seasons and are surrounded by deities including Bacchus and Ceres, the goddess associated with agriculture, as well as other mythological figures. Cartouches carry inscriptions praising the relationship between light and splendor. The decorative program culminates in representations of the Sun and Moon and has an explicitly eulogistic purpose. The room is now used for civil wedding ceremonies.
Vestibule
A second-floor vestibule retains a wooden ceiling. Its walls are decorated with white and red monochrome bands, while a complex frieze shows creatures that combine human and vegetal forms.
Third-floor fresco chambers
The three rooms facing the facade were probably reserved for Anna Wolkenstein and Ildebrando de Cles. Their frescoes were commissioned by Anna in the mid-sixteenth century and executed by a northern artist. Together, they form the principal group of the palace’s third-floor interiors.
Stanza degli Dei
The Stanza degli Dei retains an upper frescoed band in the grotesque style. Fantastic animals, enormous hens, goats, monsters, and cupids carrying arrows and torches appear among twisted branches. White and black greyhounds chase hares through the same vegetation against a yellow dotted background. Mars, Diana, and Jupiter appear above the doors and windows, while a probably female fourth deity on the west wall has been lost. The decoration presents the display and exaltation of the patron’s lordship.
Stanza di Anna
The Stanza di Anna repeatedly displays the monogram “ANNA” within white-and-red decoration. Its upper band is an unusual red monochrome composition set against blue. The main panel on the north wall shows a triumphal procession of the family of Ildebrando de Cles and Anna Wolkenstein. The couple occupies the center, with Anna placed prominently before her husband, while the surrounding court takes part in a falconry hunt accompanied by greyhounds.
A south-wall panel depicts Meleager’s mythic killing of the Calydonian boar, a subject associated with the classical story of the boar hunt. The scene is marked by energetic movement and monumental Renaissance expression. A third panel on the west wall shows an undefined battle between soldiers. The room also retains traces of a floor originally colored red and made from compacted lime-based material.
Stanza di Apollo
The Stanza di Apollo has elaborate wall decoration resembling tapestries, with white and red panels whose corners and centers are ornamented. Busts of Apollo, associated with light and the arts, Geta, and Agrippina occupy the central upper bands of three walls. They are surrounded by vegetal grotesques on yellow backgrounds. The reasons for selecting these figures and the relationships among them remain unclear.
The decoration evokes heroism, self-sacrifice, marital fidelity, and the value of women’s roles. The room preserves the same type of compacted lime floor found in the Stanza di Anna.
Rooms within the medieval tower
Three rooms contained within the perimeter of the original tower, the Vestibolo, Stanza del Camino, and Stanza del Torricino, contain a fresco cycle inspired by the Bible and associated with a northern German school. Their lower walls retain mainly white-and-red two-color decoration, while the upper bands use dark, cool colors characteristic of northern tradition.
Prison evidence and archaeological foundations
The former prison rooms contain more than 1,000 graffiti incised by prisoners before the walls were covered with wooden paneling. The inscriptions preserve the suffering and experiences of the people held there and are currently under study.
In the ground-floor Sala della Colonna, glazed openings in the floor reveal the archaeological foundations of the earlier structure beneath the tower. These remains connect the visible medieval fabric with the building that occupied the site before the tower was constructed.
