Il Palazzo dei Priori is located at the corner of Piazza IV Novembre and Corso Vannucci in Perugia.
Headquarters of the highest political authority of the city, it was decorated over the years by the best artists.
The first building core, dating back to the 1270s, was constituted. From the last decade of the thirteenth century, around a private architectural complex developed the “palatium novum populi”, whose realization was carried out in successive phases, resulting in an irregular architecture, rich in asymmetries and movement.
A first core of the palace, built between 1293 and 1297, consists of the three triforas on the second floor and the portal on the square side, as well as ten triforas that open onto Corso Vannucci. During a first expansion (1333-1337) two triforas were added on the square facade on the sides of the portal and the staircase (originally not fan-shaped) by Ambrogio Maitani (the semicircular staircase dates back to 1902). Subsequently, the right volume was built by incorporating the pre-existing church of San Severo in the square, preceding it with a portico with irregular arches.
In 1353 the palace reached the current Via dei Priori. In the following century the expansion continued, which, crossing Via dei Priori with an arch, also incorporated a medieval tower. A further extension was made between 1429 and 1443.
Going up the staircase of the square facade, passing through the ogival portal surmounted by two copies of the twelfth-century bronze Griffin and Lion, symbols of the city (the originals are inside the Palace), you enter the Hall of the Notaries. Originally the hall of popular assemblies, the rectangular room, with a vault supported by eight Romanesque arches, is entirely decorated with frescoes depicting legends, fables and biblical stories dating back to the last decade of the thirteenth century, perhaps the work of the Maestro del Farneto and the Expressionist Master of Santa Chiara, as well as with coats of arms of podestàs and captains of the people who succeeded one another in the government of the city.
The facade on Corso features, in addition to the series of triforas and quadriforas, which lighten the horizontal sense of the wall mass, a rich round-arched portal, dating back to the fourteenth century, flanked by pillars held by lions: on the left pillar are depicted the allegories of Magnanimity, Fertility, and Pride. On the right pillar are Avarice, Abundance, and Humility. The pillars are topped by two griffins who subjugate calves, symbol of the Butchers’ guild which commissioned the work while in the arch are scenes of human life. In the lunette copies (originals in the National Gallery of Umbria) of the statues depicting St. Louis of Toulouse, St. Lawrence and St. Herculanus.
On the first floor of the Palace, home to the city administration, there are various wall paintings including notable ones by Bernardino Pinturicchio in the Council Hall. On the third floor, home to the National Gallery of Umbria, is the Priori Chapel, frescoed by Benedetto Bonfigli with Stories from the life of St. Louis of Toulouse and St. Herculanus (1454-1480).
In the same building, along Corso Vannucci, are also the Collegio del Cambio, the seat of the money changers’ guild, which preserves precious frescoes made between 1498 and 1500 by Pietro Vannucci called il Perugino, one of the highest examples of Italian Renaissance art, and that of the Mercanzia, that is of the merchants, with an elegant walnut and poplar wood carving probably the work of craftsmen from beyond the Alps.
Information about Palazzo dei Priori
Corso Vannucci, 16
06121 Perugia (Perugia)
Source: MIBACT
