The Royal Palace or Palazzo Stefano Balbi is part of an important seventeenth-eighteenth century architectural complex in the Genoese Baroque style, of which the representative interiors are preserved intact, from the frescoes to the stuccos, from the paintings to the furnishings. The construction of the building was started by Stefano Balbi and continued by his son Giovanni Battista, whose powerful family - that of the Balbi - was the architect of the planning and construction process of the other buildings on the street known as "Strada delli Signori Balbi" .
The construction of the primitive building took place between 1643 and 1650. As soon as the construction was finished, the Balbi family called some of the most important fresco artists of the time for the decoration of the internal halls, such as the Genoese Valerio Castello and Giovan Battista Carlone, and the Bolognese Angelo Michele Colonna and Agostino Mitelli. In 1677 the Balbi family sold the palace to the Durazzo family who enlarged it with the incorporation of a nearby building. In 1702 the palace, despite being registered in the second bush of the rollo of 1664, hosted the king of Spain Philip IV. The palace was then sold to the House of Savoy which, following the restoration, had annexed the Republic of Genoa to the Kingdom of Sardinia. King Carlo Felice of Savoy used it as an official residence mainly in the summer months. Following the purchase, some of the most important paintings from the Durazzo collection were transferred to Turin, including the Trinity by Tintoretto, the Holy Family by Van Dyck and the famous Supper in the house of Simone by Paolo Veronese, replaced by a copy. In 1842, on the occasion of the wedding of Vittorio Emanuele II of Savoy and Maria Adelaide, the royal family commissioned the Genoese set designer Michele Canzio to transform some rooms, such as the Throne and Audience rooms and the Ballroom, to adapt them to the new needs of representation. Even the apartments on the first noble floor were restructured and redecorated by leading Genoese artists. With the transfer of the capital to Rome, the palace was less and less frequented by the royal family, until in 1919 it was definitively ceded by Vittorio Emanuele III and became state property. It was then decided to transform it into a museum.
Source Wikipedia: it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palazzo...)
Music: Drops of Earth (RU-vid Library)
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12 мар 2023
