Palazzo Cavalli

A few years after its construction, Palazzo Cavalli became notorious for the brutal murder of Vittoria Accoramboni. It was built in the mid-sixteenth century by the Cavalli family, who lived there for over two centuries. The building, typical of sixteenth-century architecture, has a very balanced distribution of spaces: the first and second floors correspond to each other and the two T-shaped "porteghi" connect the side rooms, symmetrical on the two fronts.

The fresco and stucco decoration, still visible today, dates back to the mid-seventeenth century. The ornamental richness of the atrium is striking, where there is a cycle of frescoes dedicated to Ovid's Metamorphoses . In the adjoining rooms, the Paduan painter Michele Primon depicted scenes inspired by ancient history and a lively series of hunts in the room that once served as a dining room.

The spectacular staircase, built by Bolognese craftsmen, symbolically accompanies the ascent to the main floor "guided" by the Muses. Here is the large reception hall, overlooking the master bedrooms and frescoed by the French painter Louis Dorigny, with mythological subjects in the main panels and a monochrome upper frieze animated by cupids.

The original ceiling was lost and was replaced at the end of the nineteenth century with an allegory of the triumph of Science, when the building, now owned by the State, became the campus of the Royal School of Application for Engineers. Since 1932 Palazzo Cavalli has housed the collections and the Institute of Geology, which moved in 2010.