The Palazzo della Prefettura also called the Palazzo Scotti di Vigoleno
is a Baroque architecture-style palace in central Piacenza, region of
Emilia-Romagna in Italy. The palace houses the offices of the provincial
administration.
The Palazzo Scotti Da Vigoleno is an eighteenth-century building that
belonged to the Scotti da Vigoleno family, later the seat of
the Prefecture. Worthy of note are the three-nave atrium, the grand
staircase and the frescoes, depicting celebratory allegories of the Scotti family, which adorn the upper hall.
The palace was commissioned in 1717 by the
Marchese Filippo Scotti, and completed in 1727. The architect was
Ignazio Cerri, and the palace was intended to house the extended family.
The exterior is notable for its baroque balcony. The interior fresco
decoration was completed with Rococo scenes by Francesco Natali and
Bartolomeo Rusca. The Room of Honor in the palace, also called the Hall
of Arms on the basis of the wall decorations has a ceiling fresco
depicting the Triumph of the House of Scotti. With the death of the
Marchese Gaetano Scotti in 1876, the palace was sold for 70,000 lire to
the Provincial government, who converted many of the rooms to offices.
The building was looted and damaged in April 1945, at the end of the
War, by first the fleeing Fascists and later the partisans.
A
translation
Piacenza's prefecture is based in the historic monumental
palace "Scotti di Vigoleno", which takes its name from one of the four
powerful families who exercised the power of the city during the Middle
Ages, and which named the neighborhood where the buildings of its
property stood. The palace was built by the Marquis Filippo, which
started work in 1717, to finish them a decade later. At the beginning of
the 1700s in Piacenza the families of the oldest nobility and those of
the recent nobility rich merchants shall compete for the primacy of
sumptuousness and elegance of the homes. The Marquis Filippo entrusted
the works to the architect Ignazio Cerri to erect a building adequate to
his illustrious family and to prepare a separate apartment for his
firstborn Francesco, promised spouse to Maria Lucrezia Pallavicino of
Busseto and Zibello. The construction costs were very high. The dwelling
was inhabited by a large family, assisted by many servants.
The
internal decoration was entrusted to Francesco Natali and Bartolomeo
Rusca, the best artists operating in fresh in Piacenza, which created a
series of frescoes that stands out for its high quality and originality
between the examples of the piacenza decorations of the 1700s and early
1800s. The eighteenth-century grace of the paintings make a typical
plastic and theatrical taste of the late Baroque.
The Rusca,
which had a cultural referent of the decorative vein of the Genoese
masters, was an artist with a remarkable ability to assimilate and
enrich his culture, enjoying considerable success among the most popular
families in Piacenza.
The elegant salon of honor of the Scotti
Palace of Vigoleno (Arms room for depictions on the walls), complex of
extraordinary flow rate, is characterized by the vault depicting the
"Triumph of Casa Scotti", which represents allegorical figures from
lively and fresh cromes .
At the death of the Marquis Gaetano, in
1876, none of the coheries wanted to detect the family palace,
considered high value but of no income, which, therefore, was sold for
seventy thousand lire to the provincial administration of Piacenza. The
Scotti family therefore abandoned his home and his components settled in
various palaces of Piacenza.
The Provincial Administration
established you to transfer your offices and those of the Prefecture,
deciding that the Offices of the Prefecture and the Province would have
been housed in the Western wing, using the great exhibition for
administration meetings, while the remaining of the apartment at
close-up would have been used to the Prefecture and Prefect
Accommodation offices; In the north wing he had to set up the scheduled
schedule, on the ground floor the police station and on the second floor
other offices. Then the offices of the Police Headquarters and the noble
floor of the prefect, while the rest of the premises was used as the
Prefecture offices. In March 1997 the Police Headquarters transferred
its offices at the new Viale Malta headquarters.
In the days
following 25 April 1945 the offices were looted by the fascists and then
from the partisans, and a fire determined the loss of important
historical-archival documentation. |
