BUILDING
1500S.
Palazzo Sartoretti is a building of 16th-century origin that in 1765 was renovated in the neoclassical style by the Sartoretti family, who lived in it for more than two centuries. Originally from Switzerland, like the Habsburgs whose palace butlers they were, the Sartoretis followed them to Austria and in time were awarded the post of treasurers of the Royal Treasury of the Empire; for many years they were in charge of collecting duties in the small Duchy of Guastalla. In 1979, after the death of Donna Amelia Sartoretti, the last descendant of the family, the palace and adjoining land, by her express will and with a restriction on its use for social purposes, came into the possession of the Reggiolo Municipality and the AUSL. In 2021, Palazzo Sartoretti reopened to citizens after restoration made necessary by damage sustained in the 2012 earthquake. The main facade includes the central body and two lower side wings articulated on three levels. The window openings, interrupted only by the large gateway to the garden, follow one another in an orderly and symmetrical manner in three tiers.
THE
ENVIRONMENTS
Inside, an eighteenth-century staircase with balustrade leads to the main floor, which features pictorial interventions dating from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that give the rooms a pronounced neoclassical connotation with Pompeian-style citations. Particularly sumptuous is the ballroom, called the Hall of Myths, in which trompe-l'oeil decorations create striking three-dimensional effects. A curiosity: the recurring decoration with turrets and torelli refers to the Sartoretti family name. The palace opens onto a large indoor garden, now used as a 10,800-square-meter public park, equipped with rest and play areas, inhabited by farm animals and planted with 70 native tree species, some centuries old.
