Description
Palazzo Biassa is the 16th-century noble palazzo on Piazza Beverini, on Corso Cavour in the center of La Spezia: from the outside it looks like a sober office building, but within these walls slept a future queen of France, two popes and an emperor.
It takes its name from the Biassa family, powerful in La Spezia and Genoa above all in the 15th and 16th centuries. The facade has a rusticated ground level, the marble balcony on the piano nobile and windows with alternating triangular and curved pediments; the top floor, lower than the others, was for the servants.
In 1533 a fourteen-year-old Catherine de' Medici stayed here on her way to Marseille to marry the future King Henry II; the following month her uncle, Pope Clement VII, arrived. Paul III followed in 1538 and Charles V in 1541. Rebuilt after World War II, it now houses offices of Crédit Agricole.
It takes its name from the Biassa family, powerful in La Spezia and Genoa above all in the 15th and 16th centuries. The facade has a rusticated ground level, the marble balcony on the piano nobile and windows with alternating triangular and curved pediments; the top floor, lower than the others, was for the servants.
In 1533 a fourteen-year-old Catherine de' Medici stayed here on her way to Marseille to marry the future King Henry II; the following month her uncle, Pope Clement VII, arrived. Paul III followed in 1538 and Charles V in 1541. Rebuilt after World War II, it now houses offices of Crédit Agricole.