Palazzo della Poesia, Santarcangelo di Romagna: a salt-and-tobacco warehouse named by a mural

Santarcangelo di Romagna, Emilia-Romagna · a salt-and-tobacco warehouse, then the town library · named by a street artist

At a glance

Santarcangelo is the town of Tonino Guerra and Raffaello Baldini, two of the great poets of twentieth-century Italy, both of whom wrote in the dialect of this place. So when the old state warehouse for salt and tobacco — a plain nineteenth-century block that had served for years as the municipal library — came to be renamed, the name came from a wall: the street artist Eron painted Palazzo della Poesia on it, and the town kept it. The lettering now stands in metal on the attic. The building is being fitted out to hold the archive of dialect poetry that the Baldini library has been collecting.

Key facts

• Address: Via Giovanni Pascoli 4, 47822 Santarcangelo di Romagna
• Originally the Dispensa sali e tabacchi, the state warehouse for salt and tobacco, on the via Cavallotti side
• For years the seat of the municipal library
• Renamed Palazzo della Poesia after the name painted on a mural by Eron
• Planned use: the archive of dialect poetry collected by the Biblioteca Baldini, together with the town’s family centre and culture offices, under an educational project inspired by the Comunità educante territoriale and the teaching of the maestro Moroni
• Used for the exhibitions of the Cantiere poetico, the town’s poetry festival
• Coordinates: 44.06291, 12.44759

What you see

A two-storey block in pale ochre render, scored to imitate stone, with a raised attic in the middle of the front carrying the name. The windows are the tell: on the upper floor they are wide segmental arches in brick, three on the front and three on the flank, of the kind a warehouse has when it needs light without heat. The central arch is filled with a relief of roses in the spandrels — a recent addition, like the lettering. The door is a tall iron grille in a brick surround with the number 4 beside it. Along the flank, faint ghost-drawings on the render. On the taller blind wall of the neighbouring block, a large painted figure of a hare.

Photographs

Practical information

• Opening depends on the exhibitions; the front can be seen at any time from the street
• The Museo Tonino Guerra is in the old town nearby; the Biblioteca Baldini keeps the poetry archive

Sources

• Comune di Santarcangelo di Romagna, Palazzo della poesia (page in the section «Cultura e Comunità») — «L’ex Dispensa sali e tabacchi di via Cavallotti, che per anni è stata sede della biblioteca comunale», renamed for «quel nome scritto su un murale di Eron»; the planned archive of dialect poetry, the Centro per le famiglie and the culture offices
• Santarcangelo Festival, venue page Palazzo della Poesia — Via Giovanni Pascoli 4
• The front, the number and the lettering are read from the photographs of 1 November 2025

Record researched and written by Luigi De Marchi for Cultural Heritage Online, 2026.

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