Broletto

Broletto

The Broletto was founded in the 13th century as the seat of the city public institutions in the free municipality of Novara. It is a complex building formed of four constructions of different eras overlooking a closed courtyard: the thirteenth-century Palazzo dell’Arengo that housed the town meetings; the fifteenth-century Palazzo del Podestà; the Palazzo dei Referendari and the Palazzo dei Parartici, the seat of the arts and crafts guilds.

Currently the Broletto can be visited only in part: the courtyard is used as a pedestrian area and as a venue for outdoor event, whereas the buildings house the archeological museum and the city Picture Gallery displaying the Adele and Paolo Giannoni Collection. According to the restoration and rearrangement project – concerning the Palazzo dei Paratici, the Palazzo del Podestà and part of the Palazzo dei Referendari –the entire building will house only the Giannoni collection, and the archeological museum will be moved into Novara Castle. The museum sections will be placed on the first floor of the entire building and on the ground floor of the Palazzo dei Referendari, whereas the ground floor of the Palazzo dei Paratici will become the venue for temporary exhibitions and educational workshops.

This intervention will finally make the remarkable art heritage of the town available to the public in 2011. Such a heritage has not yet been fully appreciated because of lack of appropriate exhibit venues: over 900 Italian artworks from the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries from almost all regional school, including artists from Piedmont, Lombardy, Tuscany, Veneto and Campania.