Palazzo of the Bank of Italy

A majestic building that takes up the west side of the new Piazza Cavour, it is the work of the Neapolitan architect Antonio Cipolla, creator also of Palazzo Silvani, the building that stands on the south side.
The building, whose construction commenced in 1861, boasts the only urban portico that is entirely frescoed with a conscious and coherent iconographic layout. Its creator was Gaetano Lodi, who availed of the research under way in contemporary artistic and architectural culture to find a style that would best interpret the ideal of united Italy. Cipolla on the architecture side and Lodi on the decorative, converged with many others in Italy on the choice of recovering the Renaissance style, an age of Italian excellence and a style considered better suited to supporting the ideal and political expectations of the new State.
The vaults of the portico bounded by a cage of Rapheal-style grotesques, recall, in a series of panels, the history, scientific excellence, famous figures and Italian cities of all time.