Baviera Building

The Palazzetto Baviera overlooks Piazza del Duca and was built by order of Giovanni Giacomo Baviera, Giovanni della Rovere’s maternal uncle and lieutenant, at the same time as the Rocca, perhaps designed by Baccio Pontelli, as suggested by the harmonious proportion of the small courtyard.

Giovanni Baviera arrived in Senigallia at the end of 1474 to take possession of the state on behalf of Giovanni della Rovere. The Baviera family immediately assumed a leading role in the Senigallian nobility. The building became family property in 1512 and remained so until 1956, when the Baviera family donated it to the municipality of Senigallia along with the furnishings.

Built and then adapted between the end of the fifteenth century and the first decade of the sixteenth century, the Palazzetto Baviera reproduces, in its small cloister and in its sober and elegant atmosphere, the motifs and proportions of the cloister of the Convent of the Graces. It is possible to admire an elegant colonnade that supports the portico and in the centre a well decorated on all sides with the coats of arms of the House of Bavaria.

But it is certainly on the upper floor that one of the most beautiful treasures of the city of Senigallia is revealed. A staircase leads to the main floor where you can admire the ceilings entirely decorated in stucco by Federico Brandani from Urbino (circa 1525 – 1575). Brandani, commissioned to create the work by Giuseppe Baviera, spent many years of his life creating it and eventually gave history a jewel of art. The work alternates representations of bloody battles, biblical stories, heroic deeds and historical events without ever losing the harmony of the whole.

The ceilings of the five rooms (of Imperial Rome, Republican Rome, the Iliad, Hercules, the Old Testament) are undoubtedly the greatest expression of Federico Brandani’s work.