Description
Palazzo Castagnola is the oldest of the Castagnola marquises' residences, in the historic center of La Spezia, a stone's throw from Piazza Sant'Agostino and Via del Prione. The 20th century changed its outside; inside, it keeps its noble past.
The facades were almost entirely redone after World War I, but inside the Genoese Baroque layout and the family's coats of arms remain. Those works also moved the main door, from Via Sant'Agostino to Via Gioberti; the 2021 restoration brought the building back to its best.
Those coats of arms tell a story: they were chiseled off when Napoleon's Ligurian Republic arrived. Originally, too, the palazzo did not face the street: a garden and a vegetable plot with vines separated it from today's Via Gioberti, all the way to the city walls.
The palazzo stands in one of the few caruggi, the old town's narrow alleys, spared both by 19th-century urban planning and by the bombs of the war.
The facades were almost entirely redone after World War I, but inside the Genoese Baroque layout and the family's coats of arms remain. Those works also moved the main door, from Via Sant'Agostino to Via Gioberti; the 2021 restoration brought the building back to its best.
Those coats of arms tell a story: they were chiseled off when Napoleon's Ligurian Republic arrived. Originally, too, the palazzo did not face the street: a garden and a vegetable plot with vines separated it from today's Via Gioberti, all the way to the city walls.
The palazzo stands in one of the few caruggi, the old town's narrow alleys, spared both by 19th-century urban planning and by the bombs of the war.