Palazzo Ducale, Museum building in Sabbioneta, Italy

Palazzo Ducale is a ducal residence in Sabbioneta that combines private family quarters with official state rooms across multiple floors. The interior features ornate ceilings, wall paintings, and decorative plasterwork throughout, with rooms now arranged to show how the Renaissance nobility lived and conducted government business.

This building was created under Vespasiano Gonzaga Colonna in the 16th century as part of his vision to rebuild the town as a center of art and learning. The palace served as both the family home and the seat of government for the dukes who ruled the territory.

The palace preserves the Gonzaga family's own rooms: the Sala delle aquile once held ten wooden equestrian statues of Vespasiano, his father Luigi "Rodomonte", his great-grandfather Gianfrancesco and Ludovico. The Galleria degli antenati, painted with grotesques, lines up Gonzaga portraits down to the duke, his second wife Anna d'Aragona and his only son Luigi Gonzaga (1566–1580).

The palace has two floors, not three: a marble-clad portico at ground level and the piano nobile above, where the gilded wooden ceilings of the sale d'oro are found. The civic museum is housed inside the palace, distinct from the nearby Museo del Ducato. Look up at the ceilings, where the duke's coat of arms appears in the saletta dei dardi.

In the centre of the ceiling of the saletta dei dardi, the duke's coat of arms is ringed by the collar of the Golden Fleece granted by Philip II of Spain; the original was found in his sarcophagus in the nearby church of the Beata Vergine Incoronata.