The Town Hall Building

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The seat of the Municipality of Albenga is a set of various buildings that over the years have been purchased by the Municipality until the current ensemble that covers an entire block of the ancient city delimited by Piazza San Michele, via Cavour, via Medaglie d ' Oro and Via Berbardo Ricci.

The building overlooking Piazza San Michele called Palazzo Comunale or Town Hall is the result of the unification and partly of the demolition of some medieval houses. Of these buildings, the tower at the corner on the side of the main facade and the elevation on via Bernardo Ricci remain visible. These houses were purchased by the Municipality in 1586, to house the city prisons. During the seventeenth century another building was added to the main nucleus, adjacent to the first, on the side of Via Cavour and which occupied part of the square and which was subsequently demolished. The current appearance of the town hall is due to the radical restructuring work begun in 1831 and completed in 1838 with the transfer of the municipal offices, moved from the ancient seat of the Palazzo Vecchio which became the seat of the offices of the Intendency. In this phase of the works the demolition of the tower was also foreseen, but this was not carried out. Inside, the Sala dei Busti is noteworthy, formerly the Hall of the Municipal Council entirely decorated during the nineteenth century in which three busts made in 1841 by the sculptor Santo Varni are preserved. The ceiling frescoes made in 1892 are by the Savona painter Domenico Buscaglia.

The other two buildings that are part of the municipal complex are Palazzo D'Aste and Palazzo Rolandi Ricci, both with access from Via Cavour. Palazzo D'Aste whose portal is surmounted by the coat of arms of the noble Albenganese family assumes its current appearance in the seventeenth century after the amalgamation of some medieval houses already owned by the D'Aste family since the fifteenth century. In the early eighteenth century the façade and the main floor were remodeled with the construction of the large hall, now the Sala del Consiglio Comunale, while the decoration of the adjoining Sala degli Stucchi dates back to 1791. The palace was inhabited by the family until the death of the last male descendant in 1893, Enrico D'Aste, who was mayor of the city for thirty-five years, wanted to donate his entire patrimony to the Domenico Trincheri Institute. The municipality bought the building from the Pio institute in 1896 and moved part of the offices there in 1939.

Palazzo Rolandi Ricci, like most of the seventeenth-century palaces of Albenga, is the result of the unification of a series of medieval buildings, of which two towers are clearly visible, placed at the corners of the facade on the side of via Medaglie d'Oro. The palace was owned by the Della Lengueglia family in the 16th century, and in the 17th century it passed by marriage to a branch of the D'Aste family who gave it to the Rolandi family, then Rolandi Ricci in 1749. In the building, at the time of the Italian campaign , was hosted the General Massena and Napoleon. The building remained the residence of the Rolandi Ricci until 1964 when it was sold to the Municipality. On its facade there is a commemorative plaque in memory of Senator Gerolamo Rolandi, hero of the wars of independence and the Crimean War. In the atrium at the base of the staircase there is a stone from the second half of the seventeenth century which testifies to the transfer of ownership between the Della Lengueglie and I D'Aste families.