Palazzo Petrucci is located in the Santa Cristina district and connotes, with its uniqueness, that stretch of road, in the district which in the eighteenth century became the most elegant and exclusive place in the city. Its elegant facade, recognizable by the statues placed at the top of the portals, is characterized by a rigorous horizontal division into stone courses and a projecting cornice with oculi; the windows have sandstone outlines of rigorous line, also found in other buildings of the early eighteenth century; the two rectangular inscribed arch portals, which belong to a rather widespread model in the city building of the seventeenth and eighteenth century renewal, appear ennobled by the beautiful marble statues representing the seasons in vaguely Michelangelo-like poses; vertically the facade is enclosed by corner stones which delimit the space as in a quadrature.

The building is distributed over three floors with differentiated staggering, the body is irregular rectangular in two systems, consisting of entrance hall, courtyard porch, stairwells adjacent to each other and parallel to the road axis that lead to the main floor. The layout is derived from two merged terraced courtyards, to which the spine walls of the building still belong, the construction of which is played precisely on a double spatiality that leaves the two units intact, connecting them only through the play of the ramps of the two staircases . The plan shows the attempt to create two perspective street-river telescopes from the two entrances to the terrace according to the street-building-court-building-river sequence, which is repeated throughout the city fabric. The two buildings, dating back to different eras and merged during the eighteenth-century renovation, show elements of the original systems in the courtyards: the north block, dating back to the sixteenth century, has sturdy octagonal pillars while the courtyard of the seventeenth-century body is characterized by slender columns tapered.

According to the most accredited historians, the family, originally from Siena (collateral branch of the Petrucci counts, dominant in Siena between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries), had moved to Pontremoli at the beginning of the seventeenth century. According to more recent research, however, it would have been a family of Pontremoli origins, enriched in the restaurant business because it would appear in the 15th century estimates as “Familia Hosti seu Petruty”. The palace was probably built between the 1820s and 1830s, because we know with certainty that Fabio’s sons, Giacinto (1700) and Leonardo (1705), were still born in San Geminiano. The Dimora, at the time, must have already been sumptuous: on the noble floor nine painted rooms, two alcoves and a beautiful loggia overlooking the Verde river which was then closed off. The two courtyards, one left intact, the other obliterated on one side, have two magnificent staircases, which connect to the upper floor through a wooden door carved like lace, have marble balustrades, with the balustrades arranged in perspective, very similar to that of the main staircase of Palazzo Damiani.

In 1728 Francesco Natali, architect and painter from Cremona, created the connection of the facade, the new layout of the building with the two stairwells and the sketches of the frescoes on the noble floor; the rich pictorial cycle of Palazzo Petrucci will be completed in 1733 thanks also to the precious contribution of his son Giovanni Battista, an artist much appreciated in the Italian courts of the eighteenth century. In the halls of the noble floor Francesco Natali painted the ceilings of five rooms with daring perspective solutions that double the depth of field and the already considerable height of the rooms. Giovanni Battista will work on the decoration of the alcove niche, in a couple of rooms of the apartment on the river and probably on the faà§ade. The two hands merge and mingle in Palazzo Petrucci, just as the two staircases and the two courtyards merge and mingle in a single space, so much so that those who go up on one side almost do not notice that they are descending on the other. It is an illusory, structural game, this time real, physical, but completely identical in conception to the visual, imaginary one of the painted staircase of Palazzo Dosi. The dilemma on the paternity of the fresco works is complicated by a statement by his nephew Antonio Contestabili who claims the decoration of some apartments on the main floor.

(taken from “Dimore pontremolesi” by Isa Trivelloni Manganelli, 2001 and integrated thanks to the contribution of Elena Giusti)