Built in the 1550s and 1560s by order of Duchess Margaret of Austria on the northern edge of the city, separated from the residential core, the palace still conveys a sense of majestic severity.

The story

The construction of Palazzo Farnese is due to the will of the Duchess of Parma and Piacenza, Margherita of Austria (1522-1586), daughter of Charles V (1500-1558) and wife of Ottavio Farnese (1523-1586).
While Ottavio preferred to reside in Parma, Margherita chose to live in Piacenza, where she wanted to build a ducal residence that would be a place of representation and a symbol of the power of the Farnese family.
The task of building the new residence was initially entrusted to the Urbino architect Francesco Paciotto (1521-1591).
The first project for the palace, carried out in 1558, proposed using the old foundations of the Visconti castle, built by Galeazzo Visconti in 1352, located on the outskirts of the city, to the north, not far from the banks of the river Po. The prolonged absence of the architect, and the problems linked to the impossibility of using the ancient foundations, suggested the dukes to turn to another architect, linked to the Farnese family, Jacopo Barozzi known as Vignola (1507-1573), who had already worked on the villa of Caprarola, commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1520-1589).
In the 1561 project, approved by the dukes, Vignola envisioned enlarging the building's four wings and increasing the size of the courtyard, abandoning the initial idea of building on the pre-existing Visconti architecture. The project was completed in 1602; lack of funds prevented the project's complete realization; in fact, the actual built portion corresponds to just under half of the building conceived by Vignola, and many of the intended decorative elements are missing.

The Palace's decline began with the extinction of the Farnese family and the transfer of their assets to the Bourbons. In 1734, Charles of Bourbon (1716-1788), having become King of Naples, moved paintings and furnishings from Piacenza to the city of Naples.
Looted by Napoleonic troops in 1803, the palace was then occupied by the homeless during the Second World War.

In the late 1950s, after years of abandonment and improper use, the conditions were created to restore the monumental Vignole palace and the Visconti citadel, which had been reduced to a state of extreme decay, to make them the home of Piacenza's artistic and historical collections.
To achieve these goals, the Agency for the Restoration and Use of Palazzo Farnese was established in 1965, with founding members including the Provincial Tourist Board, the Municipality of Piacenza, the Province, and the Chamber of Commerce.
Senator Alberto Spigaroli was appointed President of the new institution, and held this position until his death in August 2014. The first steps involved renovating the roofs and plastering of the rooms on the eastern side of the three floors above ground and cleaning the splendid stucco work. The floors in the same rooms were restored or rebuilt.

In 1976, the Farnese complex, still state-owned, was granted as a trust to the Municipality of Piacenza, which designated it as the home of the Civic Museums. The first section of the Museums was inaugurated in 1988; the museum structure grew in subsequent years until it housed the current sections.
In the early 1990s, the first-floor rooms were fully equipped to house the art gallery's collections, and the Ducal Chapel, the basement rooms, the building jutting into the courtyard, and the Palace's exterior facades were restored. The paving of the large courtyard, of undoubted architectural value, was also redone.
At the end of 2014, the Palace became municipal property; the work of protecting the architectural complex continues.

The Vignole project

A wooden model *, showing at a scale of 1:50 what the Palace would have looked like if it had been completed according to Vignola's design, created by the architect Enrico Bergonzoni, is exhibited in the second room on the mezzanine floor of the museum together with some panels illustrating the history of the project.
The reconstruction is based on eight drawings by Giacinto Vignola, based on his father's project, sent in 1561 to Duchess Margherita for approval, and today preserved in the State Archives of Parma.

The palace imagined by Margherita was meant to be a symbol of the power recently regained by the Farnese family.
The absence of a true façade gives the palace the appearance of a stereometric block and recalls other Vignola-style buildings, such as the Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola and the one in Rome. Further comparisons can be made with the contemporary project for another royal residence, the Louvre Palace, designed by the Bolognese architect Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1554), whose treatises greatly influenced Vignola's career.

The large diagonal niches, the same width as the arches of the loggia, give greater spaciousness to the courtyard, and find illustrious comparisons in Bramante's creations in the Cortile del Belvedere, the solutions of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger in the Porta di Santo Spirito, and the transept of St. Peter's Basilica designed by Michelangelo, constituting a further elaboration, a stimulus for subsequent generations.

The numerous windows hint at the large number of rooms and the grandeur of the interior spaces: functionality combines with elegant refinement.

On the side of the courtyard opposite the entrance, the cavea of the open-air theatre was to be built, intended for the entertainment of the dukes and their court.

*The wooden model was created thanks to the Restoration Agency of Palazzo Farnese and the Farnese Walls and the Municipality of Piacenza, with the contribution of the Association of Industrialists of Piacenza and the Emilia Romagna Region.

The Ducal Chapel

The chapel was not foreseen in Vignola's project, which had envisioned a series of more modest and smaller places of worship and oratories.

The design of this large space of worship should be attributed not to Bernardino Panizzari, known as Caramosino, but rather to Lattanzio Papio, despite a letter dated October 1595 signed by Caramosino urging Duke Ranuccio I (1569-1622) to make a decision regarding the chapel. The construction of the space would therefore have taken place under the dukedom of Ranuccio I around 1597-1601.

Octagonal in shape, with double-volume dimensions that amplify its overall effect, the space is animated by the harmonious succession of flat and concave surfaces.

In the mid-17th century, important or private ceremonies were officiated there, such as weddings between members of noble families or baptisms of Jewish converts.
According to what is documented in the Diary of Orazio Bevilacqua (1665-86) it was decorated with sumptuous tapestries and chandeliers.

It represents a treasure chest of sophisticated elegance, majestic and austere in its lines, hidden and protected by the mighty architecture of the Palace.

The secret rooms

Only in the 1970s was a small rectangular room created in a mezzanine above the alcove rediscovered.

The space features a fresco decoration created at the beginning of the eighteenth century by Francesco Natali (Casalmaggiore,1659 - Pontremoli,1735) and Sebastiano Galeotti (Florence,1676 - Mondovì,1741).

The perspective architecture with its grandiose scenographic effect is the work of the quadraturist Francesco Natali: on the walls, a fake marble base delimits the space together with pairs of marbled marble columns that suggest a greater depth than the actual one.

A complex architectural system connects the walls to the vault: above the entablature, supported at the corners by Ionic columns and sturdy pilasters, plastic volute corbels running along a cornice of ovoli and dentils support a balustrade painted in foreshortening in golden tones, with a shape that is sometimes concave, sometimes convex, and bends to form four small balconies at the corners of the hall.
The large mythological scene frescoed on the vault, on the other hand, belongs to the Florentine painter: a female figure lying on soft clouds, her head adorned with a crown of flowers, is joined by a male figure in flight, while a putto holds a swan with open wings in his hands.
The graceful youth with wings and puffed cheeks is Zephyr, god of the wind, flying towards the beautiful Flora, goddess of spring.
A white winged horse joins them, while, among the clouds, pairs of cherubs bring flowers.

Translated by AI