Palazzo Corboli Aquilini

The palace occupies a rectangular block on the eastern slope of Poggio hill and opens toward the downhill landscape. Its plan centers on an internal courtyard flanked by two wings and it rises across four levels. A shorter northern wing records the unfinished nature of the eighteenth-century expansion. On the northeast corner a small garden borders the courtyard, and the northern façade runs along a narrow street with an elevated passage bridging to the neighboring Palazzo Giusti Pianetti Castracane.

The main façade turns toward the west and presents a long frontage with a slightly projecting central bay articulated by Doric pilasters. A prominent central doorway gives access to the interior and supports a first-floor balcony whose stone-framed opening mirrors the portal below. The balcony carries a wrought-iron railing whose balusters form undulating vegetal spirals. At ground-floor level larger service entrances are finished with lowered, flattened arches while the windows beside the main portal are protected by sinuous iron grilles. A strong cornice projects under the roof line and crowns the composition.

Window openings on the principal front are set within exposed brick surrounds. Windows for the main floor sit upon a marked sill stringcourse that interrupts the vertical order of the pilasters and are finished with a gently undulating upper cornice, whereas other openings have straighter moldings. The portal is framed by shallow vertical strips that support curved shelf-like elements beneath the balcony. The door itself is set beneath a recessed arch with curled volutes where the jambs meet the arch base, and a decorative grille fills the lunette above; a similar grille frames the balcony doorway.

Interior decorative programs span several centuries. Mid-sixteenth-century stucco work by Federico Brandani originally included a ceiling in five panels showing episodes from Ventura Aquilini’s life; that ceiling was sold in 1917 and transferred in 1918–19 to the duchess’s prayer room in the Ducal Palace. Brandani’s external window reliefs are recorded in early-eighteenth-century accounts. The principal reception rooms on the piano nobile were extensively frescoed and stuccoed in the later eighteenth century. The main hall ceiling uses painted architectural effects to suggest a dome with a painted oculus that frames a mythological composition of Jupiter, Juno and the child Mars. An adjoining hall displays nine panels illustrating episodes from Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered and roundels with portraits including the poet himself. Corridors and another hall vault display a neoclassical manner with friezes and grotesque ornament.

Later changes include nineteenth-century painted schemes that survived in some upper-floor rooms until mid-twentieth-century conservation work removed them. The palace sustained structural and decorative damage in the earthquakes of 1997–98 and then underwent restorative interventions between 2011 and 2013 to stabilise and conserve its historic fabric.