Palazzo Baldassarre Lomellini

The palazzo Baldassarre Lomellini also known as palazzo di Cristoforo Spinola or palazzo Campanella is a building located in via Garibaldi at number 12 in the historical centre of Genoa, included on 13 July 2006 in the list of the 42 palaces inscribed in the Rolli di Genova that became World Heritage by UNESCO on that date.

It was built from 1562 for Baldassarre Lomellini, banker to King Philip II of Spain, to a design by Giovanni Ponzello, «chamber architect» of Genoa and designer of Palazzo Tursi, belonging to Niccolò Grimaldi, Baldassarre's son-in-law. Andrea Semino frescoed its halls with Roman stories. Of the original 16th-century façade, only the white marble portal by Taddeo Carlone survives today, bearing the inscription 'venturi non immemor aevi'. Its original appearance can be seen in engravings by Rubens of 1622.

The palace changed hands as early as the end of the 500, first passing into the hands of the Salvago family and then in 1772 into the hands of Marquis Cristoforo Spinola, ambassador of the Republic of Genoa to France, who commissioned the Genoese Emanuele Andrea Tagliafichi, assisted by the famous French architect Charles De Wailly, to renovate it, in order to update its appearance according to the emerging neoclassicism. The intervention, carried out starting in 1773, led to the creation of the sober and rigorous atrium, the porticoed courtyard that replaced the original garden, and the terrace above, adorned with classical-style pavilions.

The most famous work, however, was the so-called 'Salone del Sole', a magniloquent masterpiece of architecture and decoration, inspired by the Palace of Versailles on which De Wailly had worked. Its appearance was documented by four engravings by Louis Jean Desprez included in the plates of the entry 'Architecture' of the 'Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers de Denis Diderot et d’Alembert, and became one of the most prestigious destinations of the Grand Tour, mentioned by Stendhal and Flaubert. The salon was gutted by bombing in 1942, and later what remained of the original decorations was removed and never rebuilt.

After a decade of work, which led to the extension of the west wing and a renewed interior decoration in the French taste, Spinola, having moved to France, sold the building to Marquis Domenico Serra.

Text adapted from “Palazzo Campanella o di Baldassarre Lomellini” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Palazzo Baldassarre Lomellini ranks #5,669 of 8,133 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #418 of the 487 mapped in Italy. Founded 1562, it is older than 38% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 755 atlas entries founded in the 16th century. 19 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. See how Italy compares in the castle statistics.

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