Palazzo Piccolomini
Palazzo Piccolomini historical timeline
Last updated on October 14, 2026- — Enea Silvio Piccolomini is born in the small village of Corsignano. He will become Pope Pius II, and the village will be rebuilt and renamed Pienza — città di Pio — in his honour.
- — construction of the palace begins, to a design by Bernardo Rossellino, commissioned by Pius II as part of the project to reconstruct Pienza as an ideal city. It is also known as the Pontifical.
- the second half of the 15th century — the palace is designed and built out. Rossellino takes his model from the Palazzo Rucellai in Florence, the work of his master Leon Battista Alberti, which makes this building a direct descendant of the key monument of early Renaissance domestic architecture.
- the same years — the siting is fixed by the square rather than the reverse: the palace has to stand at about seventy-five degrees to remain parallel to the church of San Francesco and aligned with the street, and Piazza Pio II consequently becomes a slightly irregular trapezoid.
- the 20th century — the palace is used as a film set, among others for The Devil in Love with Vittorio Gassman, Pleasant Nights with Gassman and Ugo Tognazzi, and Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet.
- — the Historic Centre of the City of Pienza, this palace included, is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- — the Val d'Orcia, the landscape the palace's garden front looks out over, is inscribed at the 28th Session under cultural criteria (iv) and (vi), across 61,188 hectares of the provinces of Siena and Grosseto.
- recent years — the palace and square stand in for the Medici Palace and courtyard in Florence in the third season of the television series Medici, with Piazza Pio II visible in almost every episode.
Verified against Wikipedia, October 2026.