Palazzo Civico

Phone 0039 0522 622255 - Public Library

Opening times

Monday, Wednesday and Saturday from 09:00 a.m. to 01:00 p.m.
from Tuesday to Friday (and on first Saturday of each month) from 03:00 to 07:00 p.m.
Weekly closure Sunday
Opening periods year-round except for the month of August

How to get there

Rubiera

By car
Rubiera is 12 km from the Reggio Emilia exit of the A1 motorway – National Road 9, Via Emilia –, is located on the Via Emilia and has a Train Station.
The Palazzo Civico is in the Town historical center

By train
From the Reggio Emilia railway station, Trenitalia regional train

By bus
Bus n. 2 for Rubiera

Historical notes

Viewed from the outside, the building seems homogeneous due to the presence of a portico with four low, wide arches, but the structure is the actually the result of the joining and adaptation of pre-existing fifteenth-century houses, of which one can view on the inside several elegant windows and a frescoed coffered ceiling of the 15th century. Palazzo Civico is distinguished by a massive sixteenth-century tower. Following restoration, the building was inaugurated in 1988 as the Municipal Library. With the restructuring of Palazzo Sacrati in the second half of the 15th century, the residence of the Podesta seems to have been transferred to certain “houses of the Commune” which later information makes it possible to recognise as those subsequently transformed into the Podesta’s palace. In 1477, the meetings of the town council were held in the “houses of the Commune” in the “ground floor bed chambers” in line with the medieval custom of using the same room for various functions and considering the bedroom to be the most secure room of the house and the most suitable for conserving the family documents and riches, as well as the most appropriate place for meeting to discuss important business or to receive distinguished guests. 
The central nucleus of the current building seems to be the oldest part and conserves, on the ground floor, a room with coffered ceiling decorated with late fifteenth-century wood-engravings glued onto wooden panels. Dating from the same period is the plant decoration painted only in the part of the ceiling in masonry because it was near the flue. The decoration attests to the transformation of the old private residence into a space suitable for public functions with the transfer, perhaps to the upper part, of the Podesta’s bedroom. However, it is not yet the “camera magna” that was used during the 16th century, probably created together with the tower, which was built starting from 1537 and apparently completed by January 1540. The form of the building’s façade does not correspond to the original one, but results from subsequent restructuring carried out between the 17th and 18th centuries, which extended the front of the building up to the street. In its original form, the façade was more recessed and situated in correspondence with the wall on which the entrances under the portico still open. The porticoes also existed in the original building but at that time did not support the series of rooms on the first floor facing onto the Via Emilia; according to the medieval model they were simply set against the wall of the façade. Mention is made of this transformation in a seventeenth-century document which speaks of a Town Council room “constructed above the portico.” In that period the façade was already significantly modified and extended with the construction of a series of rooms above the portico, up to the edge of the street. Previously the only masonry structure that extended to the Via Emilia was a “tribune” accessed from a room on the first floor of the building which that was probably used for the proclamation of edicts and sentences. Its dimensions must have been limited, as in 1615 it took only twenty-four bricks to re-pave it.
The extension of the façade must have almost completely hidden from view the sixteenth-century tower, whose height went just beyond the roof of the building. To return its value as a sign of a public building, the tower was raised it to its current height in the 17th century.