Towards the end of the 13th century, the young town of Assisi purchased three buildings standing on the south side of Piazza Maggiore – known today as Piazza del Comune – to join them together to form one large public building destined to house municipal offices for those who governed the city.
Today Palazzo dei Priori is an elegant complex of white brick buildings built in the characteristic medieval Assisian architectural style – split in the middle by an arch under which one of the main streets of the old town center passes, Via dell’Arco dei Priori. This street descends from the square towards the valley and leads to the Porta del Mojano city gate on the old road to Bettona. The building takes its name from the family that occupied it in the 1330s. The Prioris were representatives to the government of arts and crafts guilds, the equivalent of what are today various associations of workers in different sectors, but they were more powerful, having their judiciary offices on the main floor of the building. As you can understand today when looking at the building, the ground floor had a loggia and was used for shops and studios rented out to artisans and merchants. Rent was necessary due to the high costs of maintenance and costs to accommodate its tenants, who stopped at nothing to find the money for rent. At the back of the building on the ground floor, in the supporting structure that reinforces the building, there are other arched doors similar to those on the front, but smaller and less evident. It was here, in this hidden part of shop backrooms that a town brothel was ‘opened’ in 1341; twenty years later it was moved to Palazzo Nuovo under the pretty Volta Pinta arch, decorated with refined ‘grotesque’ figures in the 16th century.
In 1442, Niccolò Piccinino, paid by the enemy town Perugia, attacked Assisi with twenty thousand men through an opening in the town’s aqueduct wreaking havoc on the town and slaughtering everyone including women and children. Not even Palazzo Priori escaped and it was seriously damaged; soon, however, Pope Sixtus IV and the cardinals Orsini and Savelli ordered reconstruction of the building. A plaque high on the wall over the Arco dei Priori arch testifies to this fact. In that same period, the palazzo was enlarged and incorporated the Monte di Pietà (a pawn shop) on its right and the residence of the apostolic governor sent directly by the pope to keep better control of the territory – a constant point of contention between the rival towns of Assisi and Perugia, notoriously quarrelsome and unruly.
The Guelph battlements that you see at the top of one of the buildings, like those of the Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo and Torre Civica (tower) that stand directly opposite it, were added much later and were not present in the medieval period of the palazzo. In fact, they were added during the Fascist period, part of an ambitious project to renovate the square in commemoration of seven hundred years since the death of St Frances.
Inside the building are city administration offices but the palazzo preserves the splendid decorations and family crests in the city council meeting room (Sala del Consiglio e degli Stemmi) painted in the late 1800s when Assisi was annexed to the Realm of Italy; the rooms were frescoed and furnished by Alessandro and Carlo Venanzi, renowned local artists.