Broletto, Medieval town hall in Piazza del Duomo, Brescia, Italy.
The Broletto is a civic palace complex in Brescia, built up between the 12th and 17th centuries around two courtyards. Its south wing, the Palatium Novum Maius (1223–1227), faces Via Cardinale Querini, with the rough stone Poncarali tower attached. The 54-metre Torre del Pègol rises beside the Loggia delle Grida, and the complex now houses provincial and prefecture offices.
In 1187–89 the city's free men commissioned a wooden palace beside a tall stone tower, the Torre del Pegol, near the old cathedral of San Pietro de Dom. Between 1223 and 1227 the palace was rebuilt in stone as the Palatium Novum Maius, seat of the podestà and general council. Bishop Berardo Maggi enlarged the west wing in 1295–98, and the complex was reworked again after the 1512 sack of Brescia.
The name Broletto comes from the "brolo", the orchard-garden on which the palace was built. The east doorway (1606) reuses monolithic Egyptian granite pillars from the demolished cathedral of San Pietro de Dom, and its upper section was designed by Antonio Tagliaferri in the late 1800s. Inside the porch, a stone tablet beneath the sculpture of Justice Enthroned was defaced by the Jacobins and later used to represent the Venetian Lion of Saint Mark.
The complex is entered through the Porta Orientale (1606) on Piazza Paolo VI, whose monolithic Egyptian granite pillars came from the demolished cathedral of San Pietro de Dom. The east doorway (1610) aligns with the west door along the line of the ancient decumanus. The Scalone de Lezze (1610) stands just inside the east entrance, before the 1626 doorway into the courtyard.
The Loggia delle Grida is a balcony on the building's upper level that was destroyed by French forces in 1797 and rebuilt in the 20th century. It once served as a platform where important announcements and decrees were proclaimed aloud to crowds gathered below.
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