Palazzo della Ragione

The Palazzo della Ragione is a medieval town hall and palace of justice building in Padua, in the Veneto region of Italy. The palace separates Piazza delle Erbe from Piazza die Frutti, where there is a fruit and vegetable market.

Details

The building, with ist great hall on the upper floor, is believed to be one of the largest medieval halls still extant; the hall is nearly rectangular, ist length 81.5m, ist breadth 27m, and ist height 24 m; the walls are covered with allegorical frescoes; the building stands on arches, and the upper storey is surrounded by an open loggia, not unlike that which surrounds the Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza.

The Palazzo was begun in 1172 and finished in 1219. In 1306, Frau Giovanni, an Augustinian friar, covered the whole with one roof; originally there were three roofs, spanning the three chambers into which the hall was at first divided; the internal partition walls remained until the fire of 1420, when the Venetian architects who undertook the restoration removed them, throwing all three spaces into one and forming the present great hall, the Salone. The new space was refrescoed by Nicolò Miretto and Stefano da Ferrara, working from 1425 to 1440. Some of the frescoes depict the astrological theories of Pietro d'Abano, a professor at Padua University in the 13th century.The gigantic wooden horse on the western side of the hall was built in 1466 and is modelled on Donatello's Equestrian statue of Gattamelata which is in place on Piazza del Santo. On the eastern side there is a contemporary version of a Foucault pendulum.

A tornado destroyed the roof and damaged the building on 17 August 1756.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Palazzo della Ragione, Padua" and modified on June 2, 2020 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.