Sabbioneta, Palazzo Ducale

The palace, which is the official seat and the centre of the public and administrative life of Sabbioneta, looks over the homonymous Piazza Ducale. Palazzo Ducale was built between 1560 and 1561 after a violent fire had destroyed the previous building and was constructed on four storeys: basement, ground floor, main floor and mezzanine floor, with the latter used as personal residence of the duke Vespasiano Gonzaga. The lower part of the façade shows an ashlared portico, placed at a raised level and characterized by five arch openings. The high entrance flight of steps is in white marble. A string-course cornice separates the upper part from the lower part. Windows show marble profiles and are surmounted by alternating triangular and curvilinear gables. The Duke’s inscription VESP. D. G. DVX SABLON. I. (Vespasiano as first Duke of Sabbioneta for the grace of God) appears on the architraves. Marble busts of Roman emperors stand on the consoles over the windows. On the right of the flight of steps, in the square, a bronze statue of the Duke Leone Leoni from Arezzo used to stand on a marble base; the statue is now preserved in the Chiesa dell`Incoronata. The two bronze columns, which supported a bronze head that formed a small loggia, were placed on the parapet of the balcony. The upper part of the façade was painted by Bernardino Campi and Michelangelo Veronese in 1584.