🏛️ Salone del Maggior Consiglio
Palazzo Ducale, Genova

The original hall of the Palazzo Ducale, where the 400 nobles who decided the fate of the Republic once gathered, was destroyed in the devastating fire of 1777. On that occasion, the frescoes by Marcantonio Franceschini and Francesco Solimena, as well as the works of Tommaso Aldobrandini, were irretrievably lost.

The hall was sumptuously rebuilt in a triumph of stuccoes and Neoclassical furnishings designed by Simone Cantoni. The lunettes were decorated with The Battle of Meloria by Carlo Giuseppe Ratti (known as “il David”) and Leonardo Montaldo Freeing James of Lusignan, King of Cyprus by Giovanni Battista Tagliafichi. The ceiling decoration was entrusted to Giambattista Tiepolo, who painted the celebrated Glories of the Giustiniani Family. In 1875, Tiepolo’s masterpiece was replaced by Giuseppe Isola’s Allegory of Ligurian Trade, a tribute to the art in which the ancestors of Genoa had always excelled.

At the far end of the hall, where the Doge’s throne once stood, two splendid statues can still be admired today: Justice, by Nicolò Traverso, and Fortitude, by Francesco Maria Ravaschio.

📍 Address:

Piazza Giacomo Matteotti, 9, 16123 Genova GE, 16123 Genova (GE), Italy