Broletto, Medieval civic building in Como, Italy
The Broletto is a medieval civic building on Piazza Duomo in Como, with a facade in polychrome marble. The ground floor opens onto the square through sandstone columns with marble capitals supporting rounded arches, forming an open arcade.
Construction began in 1215 under Mayor Bonardo da Codazzo, and the building was later rebuilt in the Gothic style. One of its bays was removed when the neighboring cathedral was expanded during its own Gothic reconstruction.
The ground-floor arcades were once the place where citizens gathered after the town bell rang to hear public announcements. Today the building hosts art exhibitions and events, and it remains a working part of city life on the cathedral square.
The building is open to the public and is best seen in daylight, when the marble patterns on the facade and the arcade columns are easy to read. It stands right next to the cathedral, so both can be visited together without much walking.
During restoration work in the 1970s, workers uncovered the original ground-floor columns that had been hidden behind filled masonry for centuries. They had been sealed in because street levels were raised over time to manage repeated flooding.
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