Description
The Palazzo del Consiglio dei Dodici is one of the palaces on Piazza dei Cavalieri, in Pisa: pinkish plaster, white marble and the same late Renaissance style as the buildings around it. It deserves a look if you're visiting the square, and above all for the painted hall inside.
On the façade, the marble window frames stand out, along with the portal between two columns, the balustraded openings of the piano nobile and the coat of arms. Inside, the Audience Hall has walls painted with seafaring themes by Pietro Paolo Lippi and Antonio Giusti and a carved and gilded ceiling with Ventura Salimbeni's Cardinal Virtues.
The palace changed its name with whoever occupied it: archive and chancery in the Middle Ages, Palazzo dei Priori after the Florentine conquest of 1409, and finally seat of the Council of Twelve and of the court of the Knights of Saint Stephen.
When the knights took it over, in 1691, the Triumph of Pisa at the center of the ceiling gave way to the Triumph of Saint Stephen.
On the façade, the marble window frames stand out, along with the portal between two columns, the balustraded openings of the piano nobile and the coat of arms. Inside, the Audience Hall has walls painted with seafaring themes by Pietro Paolo Lippi and Antonio Giusti and a carved and gilded ceiling with Ventura Salimbeni's Cardinal Virtues.
The palace changed its name with whoever occupied it: archive and chancery in the Middle Ages, Palazzo dei Priori after the Florentine conquest of 1409, and finally seat of the Council of Twelve and of the court of the Knights of Saint Stephen.
When the knights took it over, in 1691, the Triumph of Pisa at the center of the ceiling gave way to the Triumph of Saint Stephen.