Palazzo Maffei

The palace occupies a three-storey frontage that closes the north‑west side of Piazza Erbe, with Corso Porta Borsari opening to its left and Corso Santa Anastasia beginning to its right; Corso Santa Anastasia follows the ancient main east–west street. The façade speaks the language of late sixteenth‑ and seventeenth‑century classicising Baroque, executed in stone across three levels and finished with a decorated attic and crowning balustrade.

At street level a portico is formed by five covered archways, the central entrance sitting off centre and corresponding to the fourth opening from the left. These arches are set between rusticated pilasters in the plain Doric manner, that is a simple classical order with restrained profile, and they create a sheltered passage along the frontage. The ground storey retains the rhythm and solidity typical of seventeenth‑century urban palaces.

The noble floor above contains five large openings, each with a balustraded balcony and either triangular or curved pediments, separated by half‑columns treated in the Ionic manner, which uses a scroll‑like capital. These half‑columns are carved with mascarons, decorative faces, and a continuous cornice runs the length of the piano nobile. The attic level repeats the same ordering on a reduced scale above a row of dentils, and a high frieze decorated with supporting brackets, ornamental shields and garlands sits below the balustrade that once bore six statues.

Six deity figures crown the roofline from left to right as Hercules, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Apollo and Minerva. All are carved from local stone except Hercules, which is noticeably lighter in tone and is reported to come from the ancient Capitol; one account connects that figure with a marble base found during excavation in the cellar. The attic had been designed to accommodate a planted rooftop garden with water features, historically described as a citrus garden, but that planted terrace was dismantled by 1732 and the roof form changed subsequently.

Inside, a remarkable hollow stone helical staircase, elliptical in plan, rises from the cellar to the top floor without a central supporting newel. The stairwell is lit from above by a lantern and is finished at its summit with sculpted figures. Principal reception rooms on the noble floor conserve classicising fresco cycles dated to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while rooms that open onto a secondary courtyard retain stucco floral ornament surrounding late‑eighteenth‑century paintings.

Beneath the palace, at roughly nine metres below the present street level, fragments of the Roman Capitol survive. Foundations and column pieces from that ancient monument remain in situ in the cellar and are accessible on guided visits, providing a direct physical link between the seventeenth‑century palace above and the Roman forum that once lay on the same ground.