Palazzo dei Priori: Viterbo’s Civic Palace in Italy
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Papal States
- Site type
- Civic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page10 sections
History
Palazzo dei Priori is a civic palace in Viterbo, Italy, built and developed through the medieval and Renaissance periods as the seat of the city’s governing Priors. It stands on Piazza del Plebiscito, on ground formerly occupied in large part by the cemetery and portico of Sant’Angelo. The palace’s origins remain uncertain. It has been regarded either as contemporary with the thirteenth-century Palazzo del Podesta and Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo, or as a building begun around 1460 under Pope Pius II.
The Della Rovere transformation
The palace’s development was closely connected with the Della Rovere family, an influential Italian papal and noble house whose members included Pope Sixtus IV and Pope Julius II. After Francesco della Rovere became governor of the Patrimony of Saint Peter, the papal territorial administration in central Italy, he required Viterbo’s Priors to surrender their former palace, now occupied by the Prefecture. They moved into the still-incomplete Palazzo dei Priori, which thereafter became their permanent seat.
The facade was completed during the pontificate of Sixtus IV, between 1471 and 1484, with Bernardo Rossellino associated with the work. The building was formerly called the Palazzo del Comune or Palazzo Comunale. It continues to accommodate Viterbo’s municipal offices and also contains the Museo dei Portici, a section of the civic museum.
Civic ritual and artistic programs
The palace’s rooms preserve the changing political and cultural ambitions of the commune. The chapel of the commune was begun in 1599. Filippo Caparozzi and Marzio Ganassini started its fresco decoration in 1610, choosing episodes from the life of the Virgin. In 1615, the Conservators commissioned Bartolomeo Cavarozzi to paint the altarpiece of the Visitation.
The Sala Regia, first known as the Sala Maggiore, received its main decoration from Baldassarre Croce between 1588 and 1592. Its historical and mythological cycle presents Viterbo’s history and legendary origins from antiquity to the sixteenth century, alongside portraits of distinguished figures. The program includes the foundation of Viterbo attributed to Noah, the establishment of the episcopal see in 1192, and the foundation of the Order of the Giglio at Viterbo by Pope Paul III Farnese in 1546. It also shows Pope Celestine III consecrating the city’s first bishop and the papal vicar Bernard di Cuccinaco granting Viterbo its gonfalone, a ceremonial civic banner, in 1316 after rebellious towns in the Papal Patrimony had been defeated.
The cycle also reflects the local tradition that the Byzantine Paleologi emperors, the final ruling dynasty of the Byzantine Empire, originated in Viterbo. Their inclusion, together with legendary and historical figures, presented the city as a place of ancient origins and civic and cultural prestige. Between two windows, a scene records the procession to the Sanctuary of Santa Maria della Quercia in 1467, described by Niccolò della Tuccia. The procession established the “pact of love” between Viterbo and the Madonna, and it continues annually.
From the Papal States to the modern municipality
The bigoncia, an academic pulpit from which members of the public could address requests to the council, remained in use until Viterbo was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy and the Papal States, the territories governed by the pope, ceased to exist. A marble plaque in the courtyard commemorates the plebiscite of 2 October 1870, held shortly after the breach of Porta Pia.
The Sala dei Paesaggi was completely restored toward the end of the seventeenth century, when landscape panels attributed to Giuseppe Torriani were introduced. In July 2020, following restoration directed by the Fine Arts Superintendency, the palace received a large double-sided processional banner depicting the stories, martyrdom, and ecstasy of Saint Ursula. The canvas, measuring 280 by 180 centimetres, had previously been kept at the Church of Sant’Orsola.
Remains
Facade and connection to the civic complex
The principal facade is organized around a portico of nine arches. Above it are eight Guelf-style windows, whose design belongs to the architectural vocabulary traditionally associated with the Guelf political faction. At the center is a large oak emblem of the Della Rovere family. The portico columns evoke archaizing medieval forms, while the windows contain inscriptions in epigraphic capitals, formal Roman-style uppercase letters used for monumental writing. This use of inscriptional lettering was an innovation in fifteenth-century Viterbese architecture associated with commissions made under Sixtus IV.
An arch over Via Filippo Ascenzi connects Palazzo dei Priori with the former Palazzo del Governatore, also called the Palazzo del Podesta. Behind the latter rises a medieval clock tower whose largest bell came from the Church of Santa Maria della Verita. Across the piazza, at the northern end of Palazzo dei Priori, stands the Church of Sant’Angelo in Spatha, whose facade carries a marble replica of the ancient Roman sarcophagus of Bella Galiana. The Baroque Palazzo della Prefettura stands to the left of the palace when viewed from the piazza.
Courtyard and museum level
The internal courtyard was begun around the end of the sixteenth century and completed in 1632, the date preserved by an inscription on the lower colonnade. Its main portico, also described as constructed in 1632, opens onto a paved patio overlooking the town walls. At the center stands a seventeenth-century fountain made by Viterbese stonecutters, probably to a design by Filippo Caparozzi. Its basin bears a worn shield belonging to Girolamo Grimaldi, governor of Viterbo from 1625 to 1628. Two pairs of dolphins and two rampant bronze lions, made in the nineteenth century, form its principal sculptural elements.
Recumbent statues made from the lids of Etruscan sarcophagi surround the courtyard. Etruscan sarcophagi were often equipped with sculpted stone lids representing the deceased. On the courtyard’s northern side, an entrance leads to the ground-floor Museo dei Portici, where Sebastiano del Piombo’s altarpieces Pietà and Flagellation are preserved.
Chapel and Marian imagery
The piano nobile, the principal ceremonial floor above the ground level, contains extensive fresco decoration. The chapel, also called the Cappella Palatina, has frescoes by Filippo Caparozzi and Marzio Ganassini, together with a large Visitation altarpiece by Bartolomeo Cavarozzi, a Viterbese painter influenced by Caravaggio’s dramatic lighting, naturalistic figures, and strong contrasts of shadow.
The Hall of the Madonna contains a Madonna della Quercia attributed to Francesco d’Avanzarano. A lunette, a semicircular painted field above an opening, probably depicts the Virgin enthroned with the Christ Child, the young Saint John, and Saint Lawrence. The chronology of this work is disputed. It has been dated as early as 1488 and attributed to Giovanni Francesco d’Avanzarano, while its association with the inscription below, which celebrates the pontificate of Julius II, makes a date around 1503 more probable.
The chapel’s counter-facade shows saints and blessed figures from Viterbo. Bishop Bedini added the identifying inscriptions in 1861. Partial coats of arms represent the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence on the left and the Church of Sant’Angelo in Spatha on the right.
Sala Regia
The Sala Regia contains a vast fresco cycle arranged within a painted colonnade. Mythological and historical episodes, portraits of distinguished citizens, maps, and scenes of the city’s past occupy the walls. Painted doors show figures looking outward, a feature reflecting the Venetian influence of Paolo Veronese. Above the doors on the smaller walls are four important cardinals from Viterbo, Fazio da Viterbo, Marco da Viterbo, Egidio da Viterbo, and Raniero Capocci. Thirty-six cameo-shaped medallions contain portraits of bishops of Viterbese origin added in later periods, while maps cover the long wall.
The coffered ceiling contains sixteen landscape panels representing thirty-three castles formerly dominated by Viterbo. Ludovico Nucci and Tarquinio Ligustri painted these landscapes at the end of the sixteenth century. Teodoro Siciliano decorated the hall in 1559 with mythological and historical figures connected imaginatively with Viterbo’s origins or drawn from history. Among them are Desiderius, the last king of the Lombards, the Frankish kings Pepin the Short and Charlemagne, and the antiquarian Annio da Viterbo.
Siciliano’s figures are generally nude or dressed in Roman military clothing, with a marked Michelangelesque influence. They occupy large niches and are larger than life-size, wearing classical armor or primitive clothing and accompanied by Latin or vernacular praises. The sequence of illustrious men includes King Atlas, Corythus, Iasius, Hercules, Terbus Thirrenus, Herculis Nepos, Desiderius, Charlemagne, and Pepin the Short. Together, the paintings adapt the Renaissance practice of honoring civic, dynastic, and cultural heroes through monumental imagery.
Council rooms and civic view
The Sala del Consiglio contains monochrome frescoes of heroes and saints. The library preserves portraits of the historian Francesco Orioli and the scholar Antonio Tagliaferri. In the window of the Sala dei Paesaggi, a movable pillar can be removed to give distinguished visitors a better view of the descent of the Machine of Saint Rose, the monumental processional structure carried through Viterbo during the annual celebration of its patron saint. Pope John Paul II viewed the event in 1986.
