Palazzo Cipriano Pallavicini

History and description

On the site of the present building, a construction for residential use had been erected, starting in the 15th century, consisting, according to medieval tradition, of two buildings side by side with underlying water cisterns and workshops. The building stood at a crossroads, which in 1539 was to be transformed into a piazza by demolishing the surrounding hovels, at which time Cipriano Pallavicini, (elected in 1567 archbishop of Genoa) with his brothers Antoniotto and Gerolamo commissioned an author who has remained anonymous to design a new façade with a more modern façade and a design inspired by the Roman Palazzo Caprini by Donato Bramante.

In 1571 the palace was sold to Antonio Brignole but in 1584 it returned to the ownership of the Pallavicino family in the person of Francesco Pallavicini, holder of the first inscription to the rolli dating back to 1599, the building also remained in the following rollo of the year 1614.

In the following centuries, ownership passed to the Grillo (family) (1713), to the Saporiti family (1718) and finally in 1840 to Federico Rayper from Ticino, supplier to the Navy of the Kingdom of Sardinia and father of the painter Ernesto Rayper, who asked permission to raise the building by two storeys and carry out an invasive general renovation during which almost the entire shell was emptied, the result being a building divided into flats, with decoration in the neoclassical fashion.

All that remains of the Carlone family's great portal, preserved for more than a century at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Rubensian engravings.