History
Erected in 1612 in an area that has been central since the first Millennium, it stands alongside the Cathedral of San Lorenzo and just a few steps from the Doge’s Palace.
Palazzo Fieschi Negrone has always played a role of extreme centrality in the urban fabric and in everyday life in Genoa. Located, in fact, in an area that since the first Millennium has been identified as the centre of a city—and of a city wall—in continuous evolution, the importance of the site on which it stands is clearly testified by its “facing” adjacency to the Cathedral of San Lorenzo as well as by its nearby proximity to the Doge’s Palace. Built around 1612 for Francesco Fieschi and later acquired by Sinibaldo Fieschi, the building already appears from 1614 in the Rolli lists, registers in which prestigious noble residences—private, it should be noted—were recorded and used to host distinguished public figures on “State visits” to Genoa.
The design of the palace, coordinated by the Genoese Bartolomeo Massone, can with considerable probability be attributed to the celebrated Vincenzo Scamozzi—architect of the Olympic Theatre in Vicenza—who, not by chance, included the building’s plan in his treatise L’idea dell’architettura universale (1615).
The majestic façade, well established in the imagery of every Genoese, is animated by a triumphal entrance portal, imposing mascarons and white marble quadratures, as well as by a refined cladding in bichrome bands—white and black marble—a typical medieval decorative motif that, not by chance, recalls the facies of the nearby Cathedral.
During the nineteenth century, following the major Urban Master Plan that laid the foundations of the present-day city road system, the so-called “carretteria” or “Strada carretabile Carlo Alberto”—today Via San Lorenzo—was built with the aim of connecting the city’s principal economic centres, such as Piazza Caricamento and Piazza De Ferrari. This modification (1837–1840) resulted in the setback of the façade by a few metres from its original position.
A constant presence, therefore, in the urban identity of the city, Palazzo Fieschi Negrone currently belongs to the heirs of Tommaso De Ferrari, to whom the building was sold in 1879.