Palazzo of the historic headquarters of Cassa di Risparmio

The large, bright portico – one of the few in Bologna with a caisson ceiling – attests the solemn status of this building, the headquarters of the city's most important bank in the immediate post-Unification period.
Founded in 1837 and initially housed in Palazzo del Podestà, Cassa di Risparmio required a headquarters appropriate for its role, a headquarters that emanates solidity and decorum, but without ostentation. Following a tender with no convincing winners, the appointment was given to Romagna native Giuseppe Mengoni, who was also engaged in building Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele (where he died after falling off a scaffold) as well as in work sites and projects in Florence and Rome.
In line with what was happening in other cities, the style chosen for the bank was neo-Renaissance which, with its symbolic importance (referring to the Renaissance bankers and the wealth of Italy's golden years) and vast decorative samples, seemed to interpret the client’s values well. Actually, Mengoni’s choices for the building implemented a decorative scheme that looked beyond Bologna, both in terms of shapes and materials: in particular, cut stone was preferred to the brick or plaster characteristic of the city.
At the technological level, the building was cutting-edge also in the choice of innovative building methods.
The ironwork is striking, done by the craftsman of the Cambiaggio workshops in Milan. They were able to make extremely light products by machining the metal under vacuum: the large entrance gates on the main front, as a newspaper of the period reads, could be moved by an infant who was barely able to stand up.