Palazzo Imperiali-Filotico: A Baroque Feudal Residence in Manduria
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Kingdom of Naples
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page8 sections
History
Palazzo Imperiali-Filotico is an eighteenth-century feudal residence in Manduria, Italy, commissioned by the Imperiali princes of Francavilla and begun in 1719 in the Baroque period. Built on the ruins of the medieval castle, it formed part of a programme that reshaped Casalnuovo, the former name of Manduria until 1789, with new urban routes extending west beyond the ancient walls.
The Imperiali foundation
Michele III Imperiali, prince of Francavilla and lord of Casalnuovo, ordered the new residence in 1717. Its entrance inscription gives the date as “Michael Imperialis A.D. 1717,” while construction began two years later. The decision was probably linked to the marriage of Michele III’s son Andrea to Anna Caracciolo della Torella in 1717. The architect is unknown. Mauro Manieri of Lecce directed the works, and the designer may have belonged to the circle of Roman architects employed by Cardinal Giuseppe Renato Imperiali.
The Imperiali family had established its court in the principality of Francavilla after Davide Imperiale, a Genoese patrician who commanded five galleys at the Battle of Lepanto, received the fiefs of Oria, Francavilla, and Casalnuovo from Philip II of Spain in 1572. Lepanto, fought in 1571 between the Christian Holy League and the Ottoman fleet, was a major naval battle. The family later modernized its fiefs through extensive architectural works, supported in part by income from coastal saltworks.
Incomplete construction and changing ownership
The palace was never completed and was probably never occupied by the feudal family, who resided at the castle of Francavilla. Work on the south-eastern wing stopped in 1738 after Michele III’s death. Plans envisioned more than 120 rooms, whereas the popular name “Palace of the 99 Rooms” arose from a tradition that feudal residences could not exceed that number. The traditional count is considered plausible largely by coincidence.
Michele IV Imperiali, Michele III’s universal heir, continued the succession but lived in Naples after 1755. He died there in 1782 without descendants. The building then belonged for several years to the Royal Treasury and was occupied by the French army in 1806. Vincenzo Imperiali, marquis of Latiano and the new prince of Francavilla in freehold, later bought it back. Ownership passed to his youngest son Federico in 1817 and then to the Filotico family on 18 August 1827.
The Filoticos acquired an uninhabited, partly ruined palace without furnishings or household equipment, together with part of the former feudal landholdings. In the following decades they completed and furnished the building and installed a collection of paintings from the Neapolitan and Roman schools, assembled by Vincenzo Filotico in the late eighteenth century. The family occupied the palace for about two centuries and nine generations. After a postwar division among heirs, some external ground-floor premises left family ownership and became shops, other commercial spaces, and a bank branch.
Earthquake repairs and protection
The main staircase and entrance portal were reconstructed after the 1743 earthquake in Terra d’Otranto, a former province of the Kingdom of Naples broadly corresponding to much of present-day Salento and parts of neighbouring Apulia. The redesign was probably connected with Luigi Vanvitelli, the architect known for the Royal Palace of Caserta and for work joining late Baroque traditions with emerging Neoclassical tendencies. In a letter from January 1752, Vanvitelli mentioned a staircase designed for the Prince of Francavilla.
Protection as a building of historical and artistic interest began in 1917. A 1986 decree of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, issued under Italy’s 1939 heritage law, formally established the name Palazzo Imperiali-Filotico. The palace is also registered with the Apulian section of the Association of Historic Houses of Italy.
Remains
The palace is a large square urban residence standing free on all four sides. Its plan includes a broad central atrium and a passage through the stables to the street behind. The austere exterior differs from the richer late Baroque architecture common in Salento and has been compared with late Mannerist Roman buildings from the transition between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Facade and civic spaces
The main façade carries large heraldic cartouches at the corners, bearing the arms of Michele Imperiali and his wife, Irene Delfina di Simiana. Its principal Rococo feature is a long wrought-iron balcony with a curved “goose-breast” pattern, inspired by the ducal palace of Martina Franca. The monumental entrance portal is framed by two Tuscan-order columns. The Tuscan order is the simplest classical column type, characterized by plain shafts and limited ornament.
At the north-eastern corner, beside present-day Piazza Commestibili, closed arcades survive from the former Sedile. This was a civic meeting and administrative space used by the Universitas, the self-governing civic community of a southern Italian town under the feudal system, under a concession from the feudal lord. The Filoticos later added the broad northern loggia to the atrium. Built over arcades, it links the monumental staircase with the north-eastern wing.
Entrance and ceremonial rooms
The portal opens into the entrance hall and then into the atrium, whose eastern side contains the entrance to the stables. A monumental double-flight staircase rises from the atrium. At its upper landing, another portal leads into the principal salon, which measures 17.8 by 9 metres. The salon provides access to the sequence of rooms on the principal floor and to the stairs leading to the apartments on the second floor.
The central part of the ground-floor entrance hall originally matched the dimensions of the ceremonial salon above and contained two central pillars. Later alterations narrowed this space through the creation of enclosed rooms on both sides. The palace’s planned arrangement extended to more than 120 rooms, although the south-eastern wing remained unfinished after work stopped in 1738.
The open-air salon
The ceremonial salon originally had an exceptionally high roof. It was reportedly damaged in the 1743 earthquake but was still present in 1804. Damage from a tornado led to its dismantling during the first half of the nineteenth century, leaving the lofty space in the form later known as the “open-air salon.”
