Palazzo Botta, Neoclassical palace in Pavia, Italy

Palazzo Botta is a large building in central Pavia with a formal classical-style facade. The structure has a rectangular shape with four wings arranged around an inner courtyard, with the exterior decorated with double rows of columns and numerous windows.

The site belonged to the Beccaria family from the late 15th century and passed to Margherita Campeggi around 1640; the Botta family was already living there by 1636. Luigi Botta Adorno rebuilt the palace from 1693, and it was completed at the end of the 18th century. In 1887 the Cusani Visconti heirs sold it to the University of Pavia.

Palazzo Botta served as the residence of the noble Botta family and still shows through its surviving rooms how aristocrats lived in the 1700s. The ceiling frescoes with mythological scenes and elaborate stuccos reveal how grand homes like this displayed family power and wealth.

Enter from Piazza Botta Adorno Antoniotto; the palace also has a long facade on Via Lanfranco. The university's 1887–1893 remodeling by Leopoldo Mansueti and Augusto Maciachini created the present classicist look and two symmetrical staircases. The surviving Baroque rooms are on the first floor, reached through the central arched portal.

The alcove vault fresco shows Antoniotto Botta Adorno, envoy of Maria Theresa to St. Petersburg, at the feet of Tsarina Anna of Russia with the two spouses whose marriage he negotiated. The antechamber keeps its carved 18th-century doors and a polychrome marble fireplace with the Botta Adorno coat of arms on the fireguard.