Palazzo Bentivoglio, Renaissance palace in Gualtieri, Italy

Palazzo Bentivoglio is a monumental building on Piazza Bentivoglio in Gualtieri, with a wide facade flanked by two tower-like side bodies and a central section rising one storey above the rest. Access is through three large porticoes, the central one larger. Inside, frescoed rooms include the Sala dei Giganti, painted with scenes from Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata.

Gualtieri passed from Este rule to Marquis Cornelio Bentivoglio in 1567, when Alfonso II d'Este granted him the fief. Bentivoglio had Giovan Battista Aleotti design the palace as the seat of his power, using material from the demolished old castle. Ippolito Bentivoglio ordered its completion from 1594 in classical Renaissance forms, and the family saw it finished in the first decade of the 1600s.

The building houses several museums and collections today, including a documentary museum and the Antonio Ligabue Museum Foundation. These institutions make the palace a living place of art and history that visitors encounter as they walk through.

The palace stands at Piazza Bentivoglio 43, on the square of the same name in the centre of Gualtieri. Its three large porticoes, the central one wider than the others, open directly onto the piazza, so the facade is reached on foot from the surrounding streets.

Part of the material for the palace came from the demolition of Gualtieri's old castle, which stood on the site before the Bentivoglio built here. In 1751 part of the palace itself was demolished so its stone could be used to reinforce the banks of the Po against floods.