Palace of the Popes site features

The Palace of the Popes stands beside the Duomo on the Colle del Duomo, and the two together make the most important monumental group in Viterbo. It is a massive building, and from the side away from the piazza it overhangs the valley of FAUL on heavy buttresses -- so the face it shows the town and the face it shows the valley are quite different propositions.

The front

The facade looks onto piazza San Lorenzo and is reached by a wide staircase finished in 1267, carried on a pointed arch with a room beneath it, directly under the Sala del Conclave. At the top the staircase meets a portal under a round-arched vault, with the arms of San Bernardino above it and a bracket carrying the statue of a small lion; between the crown of the arch and the bracket is a framed square tablet in memory of Raniero Gatti. The top of the walls is finished with square merlons, set exactly at the foot of the roof slope. Beside the portal is a smaller opening, also round-arched, reached from a gallery and giving direct access through a grille to the loggia balcony, right beside where the Sala del Conclave opens onto it.

The loggia

To the right is the Loggia delle Benedizioni -- the Loggia of the Blessings, because the pope came out onto it from the Sala del Conclave. It is roofless, and its arcade is cleverer than it first looks. Three round arches run across the centre with two half-arches at the ends, closing against the palace wall on the left and the curia on the right; three more are interwoven with them, so that what the eye reads is seven pointed openings carried on six slender doubled columns, with trilobed arches. A trabeation runs along the top of the whole arcade. Inside the loggia stands a fifteenth-century fountain, assembled from material of several ages and carrying the Gatti arms, and the stonework is decorated with crests and reliefs.

The Sala del Conclave

The palace ends on the right in the Sala del Conclave, which addresses the piazza with six two-light windows and six loophole windows above them -- and shows exactly the same arrangement on the opposite side, over the FAUL valley. It was built as a great audience hall communicating with the loggia, which is raised on a barrel vault above the city street below.

The Sala del Conclave

Built as the great audience hall of the Palace of the Popes at Viterbo and named for what happened in it: the first and longest conclave in history, the election of 1268-1271, which ran 1,006 days. Six two-light windows face the piazza with six loopholes above them, and the same arrangement faces the valley behind.

The Loggia delle Benedizioni

Raised in 1267 under Clement IV. Seven pointed openings on six slender doubled columns, with trilobed arches -- an effect produced by interweaving three round arches and two half-arches with three more, rather than by simply repeating a bay. A trabeation runs the length of it, and the stonework carries crests and reliefs.

The fountain in the loggia

Fifteenth-century, assembled from material of various ages and carrying the coat of arms of the Gatti family, whose Capitani del Popolo built the palace around it two centuries earlier.

The staircase

Completed in 1267, wide enough to be ceremonial, and carried on a pointed arch with a room underneath it directly below the Sala del Conclave.

The Raniero Gatti tablet

A framed square stone set between the crown of the portal arch and the bracket above it, in memory of the Capitano del Popolo who had the palace enlarged for the papacy.

The buttresses over the FAUL valley

From the side away from the piazza the palace overhangs the valley on massive buttresses -- the engineering that made a building of this depth possible on the edge of the hill, and the reason the Sala del Conclave can show the same six-window front in both directions.