Palazzo Negri Dosi has a double L layout with an axis of symmetry that controls and organizes the entire complex according to the succession of road-entrance-entrance hall-portico-courtyard-garden-belvedere-river; the structure still has something classic: on a facade with severe lines, characterized by a large cornice with a volute shelf, there is an austere portal which leads to a long entrance hall and, beyond the arcaded loggia, the garden, a true place of delights, at the bottom of which the Belvedere closes the space; the perspective optical telescope which from the portal channels the light along the entrance hall, makes it explode in the garden by mediating it with the chiaroscuro of the portico, causing the gaze to push beyond this building beyond the river into the surrounding countryside. The double L plan can be traced back more to a villa of delights than to a city palace. […]

The plan of the building extends with two arms to the edges of the lot; there are no rooms on the ground floor, a probative element of the ex novo construction, which has a rectangular structure in which the entrance hall, the portico overlooking the garden, the large staircase, the gallery and the hall on the upper floor are housed and two projecting side wings they form the arms of the double L, in which sitting rooms and bedrooms are housed. A second floor, connected with a lateral service staircase, housed the kitchens and the servants’ apartments, concerning only the facade on the street and which do not constitute the volume on the garden side; the facade on the garden, very close to the model of Palazzo Barberini in Rome, thus remains on only two floors with porticoes, large windows and blind arches. It strongly recalls a style that mediates the late Mannerist taste with that of the early Baroque. Such a highly compact visual impact rivals the graceful grace of the Belvedere at the end of the garden: “a building with a distance and symmetry typical of theatres..”.

The small building perhaps designed by Giovan Battista Natali when, between 1732 and 1738, he frescoed the vault of the staircase, develops on two levels: a lower floor with three vaulted rooms and an upper floor open on one side with a marble balustrade on the garden. […] In the garden of Palazzo Negri, the building acts as a theatrical backdrop to stop the eye that goes beyond it, beyond the river and towards the countryside and its view is prepared, starting from the entrance, with an optical-perspective telescope which is made up of the entrance hall, the stone opening, surmounted by statues, and the garden path.

In Palazzo Negri the perspective sequence street-portal-entrance hall-courtyard-rooms-garden-river is therefore respected. However, since it is a free-plan building and the basic fabric of the terraced courtyard and consequently the building on the river is missing, it can be assumed that the last part of this sequence is resolved by the architect with the construction of a final point of view at the end of the garden.

The portico with four arches, onto which the entrance hall and the grand staircase open, is at the center of the composition of the building but, having an even number of arches, the axis of the sequence is eccentric. The portico leads to the magnificent staircase decorated with female statues, Spring and Summer, with a marble balustrade very similar to those in the Dosi and Petrucci palaces. The staircase occupies a single room, illuminated, on one side, by large windows and its unraveling, in the absence of a spine wall, closely resembles the staircase of Palazzo Costa in Piacenza, attributed to Ferdinando Bibbiena, great set designer, architect and painter, initiator of the Bolognese school of quadrature and master of Natali. The staircase leads to the gallery illuminated by large windows, decorated with ovals containing busts, which leads to the hall and the other rooms on the main floor.

(taken from “Dwellings of Pontremoli” by Isa Trivelloni Manganelli, 2001)