Palazzo della Meridiana, Renaissance palace museum in central Genoa, Italy

Palazzo della Meridiana is a Renaissance palace in central Genoa with a northern facade decorated with frescoes depicting the Labours of Hercules. The building contains two internal loggia courtyards and gardens that open the palace from its exterior to its interior spaces.

Gerolamo Grimaldi Oliva, a banker enriched by tax collection in Cordoba and Granada, built the palace between 1536 and 1544. His son Giovanni Battista commissioned frescoes in several rooms from Luca Cambiaso, Giovanni Battista Castello and Lazzaro Calvi between 1556 and 1566. In 1697 the central loggia was walled up and the first courtyard turned into a closed atrium. The opening of Strada Nuovissima (1778–1786) led Giacomo Brusco to rebuild the south facade and add the painted sundial that gave the palace its name.

The palace takes its name from the painted sundial that Giacomo Brusco added to the rebuilt south facade when Strada Nuovissima, today via Cairoli, was opened between 1778 and 1786. The Grimaldi-Oliva family kept the building for three centuries before selling it in 1835 to Paolo Sebastiano Odero.

The building sits at Salita di San Francesco 4 in Genoa's historic center and is easily reached on foot. Today the palace combines museum functions with commercial uses, so check opening times and possible access restrictions before your visit.

The frescoes of the Labours of Hercules are on the north facade, not the main one, and are attributed to Aurelio Busso. Rubens chose to illustrate this palace from its garden side in Palazzi di Genova (1652) because the Salita di San Francesco front is irregular owing to the slope.