Palazzo Maffei is a historical palace in
Verona
Verona ( ; ; or ) is a city on the Adige, River Adige in Veneto, Italy, with 255,131 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region, and is the largest city Comune, municipality in the region and in Northeast Italy, nor ...
,
northern Italy
Northern Italy (, , ) is a geographical and cultural region in the northern part of Italy. The Italian National Institute of Statistics defines the region as encompassing the four Northwest Italy, northwestern Regions of Italy, regions of Piedmo ...
, on the north-western side of
Piazza delle Erbe.
A building existed in the current location in the 15th century, but on 20 December 1469 the nobleman Marcantonio Maffei decided to expand it by adding a third floor. Construction works ended only in 1668.
The three-floor façade of the palace is in
Baroque style
The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from the early 17th century until the 1750s. It followed Renaissance art and Mannerism and preceded the Rococo (i ...
. It starts at a slightly higher level than the square: underneath remains can be seen of the ancient Roman Capitoline Hill, where the Piazza delle Erbe later was settled.
The first floor has five arcades between
tympani
Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a membrane called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally ...
. Over each arcade a window with an elegant balcony is placed, separated by
Ionic semicolumns decorated by large masks.
The third floor is in the same style as the second, but with smaller windows and fake framed columns. The top of the facade is designed as a balustrade with six statues of divinities: Hercules, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Apollo and Minerva. The latter are cut from local marble, with the exception of the Hercules, which is believed to have come from an ancient temple once located on the Roman Capitoline Hill.
The interior is home to a bizarre
helicoid
The helicoid, also known as helical surface, is a smooth Surface (differential geometry), surface embedded in three-dimensional space. It is the surface traced by an infinite line that is simultaneously being rotated and lifted along its Rotation ...
al stone staircase, that leads from the underground stores all the way up to the roof.
Sources
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Baroque architecture in Verona
Baroque palaces in Italy
Maffei