A palace built in 1932 as the residence of a prince of Savoy, on the ground of a Renaissance-revival villa demolished to make room for it, and the seat of the Government Commissariat for the province of Bolzano since 1972. It is not a Rationalist building, and it was not built as an office.
At a glance
- Type
- Palace; seat of the Commissariato del Governo for the province of Bolzano
- Where
- Viale Principe Eugenio di Savoia 11, 39100 Bolzano / Bozen
- Coordinates
- 46.5050° N, 11.3393° E
- Before
- Villa Wendlandt, 1872, by Gottfried von Neureuther
- Built
- Inaugurated 28 October 1932, architect Ferdinando Forlati
- Style
- Stile Novecento, with classical influence and marked restraint
Overview
The palace stands on the Prinz-Eugen-Allee, the Viale Principe Eugenio di Savoia, in Bolzano. It replaced a villa that had stood on the same ground for sixty years, and it was built in the years when the Italian state was remaking the face of a city it had annexed after the First World War. Its interest lies in what it actually is, which is less straightforward than the label usually attached to it.
History
Villa Wendlandt was not the house of a prosperous local family. It belonged to Wilhelmine Ottilie Wendlandt of Hamburg, who commissioned it from Gottfried von Neureuther of Munich; it was built in 1872 in an austere Renaissance manner. It was demolished in 1932 by order of Benito Mussolini.
In its place rose the Palazzo Ducale, known also as the Palazzo Reale or Villa Reale, inaugurated on 28 October 1932. The architect was Ferdinando Forlati, Superintendent of Antiquities and Works of Art for the province of Trieste, and the building was intended as the residence of the Prince of Pistoia, Filiberto Ludovico Massimiliano of Savoy, second son of Prince Tommaso, Duke of Genoa, and of Princess Isabella Luisa of Bavaria.
It served as the ducal residence until the autumn of 1942. From 1942 to 1945 it housed the German authorities. It then stood unused from 1945 to 1958, became the seat of the Vice Commissioner in 1958, and since 1972 has been the seat of the Commissariato del Governo, the Government Commissariat for the province of Bolzano.
What you see
The building shows the influence of Classicism while keeping a marked decorative restraint, in mass as in detail, which is what makes it one of the more interesting examples of the Stile Novecento. It is not Rationalist, and describing it as Rationalist — or as monumental Fascist architecture of the kind Bolzano has elsewhere — misses both the intention and the result.
The interiors are the reason the palace is called rare. There is fine furniture, inlaid woodwork, and marble facing in vivid colours: rosso antico Griotte, nero Belgio, giallo Torri, paonazzo, cipollino toscano, verde antico, fior di pesco from the Val Renara, nero nube, grigio reale, calacatta of Carrara, rosso Levanto. The painted decoration includes work by the Venetian Palma il Giovane and by Francesco Maffei of Vicenza, alongside Basilio and Tommaso Cascella, Pino Casarini, Giovacchini, Siniscalchi and Antonio Simeoni.
360° photos
Drag inside the frame to look around from this point.
Cultural significance
Bolzano is the capital of an autonomous, largely German-speaking province that became part of Italy only after the First World War, and the architecture the Fascist state put up here in the 1920s and 1930s remains part of a live argument about how such buildings should be held and explained. The Palazzo Ducale belongs to that decade of building, and to the policy behind it. It is worth adding what it is not: the site of that argument in Bolzano is above all the Victory Monument and the relief on the former Casa del Fascio, and the Palazzo Ducale — a princely residence turned government office, with Palma il Giovane on its walls — sits in a quieter place than those.
Practical information
- Address: Viale Principe Eugenio di Savoia 11, 39100 Bolzano / Bozen.
- The palace is a working government building and is not a museum: there is no general public access, and the interiors are seen on institutional occasions or by arrangement.
- For the architecture of the period more widely, local cultural associations run guided walks of Fascist-era Bolzano; the provincial Soprintendenza ai Beni culturali holds the heritage record.
Getting there
Bolzano station has frequent trains from Verona, Trento and Innsbruck. The palace is on the Viale Principe Eugenio di Savoia, a short ride or a walk from the centre on the city bus network.
Sources
- Commissariato del Governo per la provincia di Bolzano — «Il Palazzo Ducale»
- Provincia autonoma di Bolzano, Soprintendenza provinciale ai Beni culturali — Monumentbrowser
- Trentino Cultura — historic photographs of the Forlati project
- Cultural Heritage Online historical archive — original Italian entry on beniculturalionline.it, verified and rewritten in August 2026.
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