Piazza del Monte
Address and contacts
Piazza del Monte - 42121 Reggio Emilia GiraReggio
How to get there
Reggio nell'Emilia - Town centre
Historical notes
The square, a much-frequented location due to its position along the Via Emilia, is surrounded by numerous noteworthy and historically important buildings.
The most prominent is that which lends the square its name and separates it from Piazza Prampolini: the Palazzo del Monte, also called the Palazzo del Podestà, names that emphasize its main uses over the centuries. Originally it was the home of the Podestà (high-ranking government official) then, at the end of the 1400s, the seat of the city’s Monte di Pietà (a type of organized charity and lender). Later the interior became home to the praetor’s office, an indoor court for ball games, and a theatre destroyed by fire in 1740.
The clock tower, visible from Piazza Prampolini, was erected in 1216, shortly after the construction of the palace itself in 1188.
Another noteworthy structure is the historic headquarters of the Hotel Posta, made up of two adjacent buildings restored in the 1920s in two different styles: the one facing Piazza Prampolini in a pseudo-Renaissance style and the one facing Piazza del Monte (after several discoveries during the restoration) in a thirteenth-century style, the period to which the building itself dates. On the first floor, in the “Captain’s Hall” several original frescoes are preserved.
Recently renovated and now home to a commercial gallery is the seventeenth-century Palazzo Bussetti, traditionally attributed to Lorenzo Bernini, which defines the northern boundary of the square and contains several 17th-century paintings and stuccoes in its interior.
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