Palazzo Moroni and the main floor of Caffè Pedrocchi

We begin the tour in the heart of the city by entering Palazzo Moroni, seat of the City Hall, with a visit to the Nodari Chapel and the Sala Giunta.
The political and administrative history of the city is told in its public palaces, which constitute with their architectural presences a nucleus of very different buildings. The medieval palazzi del Consiglio and degli Anziani dominate the Piazza della Frutta while the 16th-century Palazzo Moroni overlooks Piazza delle Erbe. The Moretti Scarpari wing, on the other hand, was built between the two world wars on 8th February Street and became home to the new City Hall offices. A complex of buildings vital to all Paduans that will be recounted in its alternating political and architectural vicissitudes.
We will continue the visit with the discovery of the Piano Nobile (main floor) of the historic Caffè Pedrocchi.
As in Venice, many cafés sprang up in Padua in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a place for meeting and reading: in 1760 at least forty cafeteria owners were documented.
In 1816 Antonio Pedrocchi, son of a café owner from Bergamo, commissioned the well-known Venetian architect Giuseppe Jappelli to expand the small café he had inherited from his father. The new Caffe Pedrocchi was inaugurated in 1831. Its splendid architecture, which mixes neoclassical and Venetian Gothic styles, with exotic Egyptian and chinoiserie references, much in vogue in the 19th century, reflects the romantic climate of the time and the flair of architect Jappelli. Inside, the café still features the original decorations and furnishings, traceable to the eclectic taste of the time, rich in exotic symbolism.
On the upper floor, there is a series of functional spaces decorated with historical styles of the past: the Etruscan Room, the Greek Room in octagonal form, the Round or Roman Room, the Renaissance Room, the Herculaneum or Pompeian Room, the Egyptian Room, and the Napoleonic Room, dedicated to Gioacchino Rossini, and for this reason also called the Rossini Room, a true theater where the stuccos, curtains and chandeliers seem to take us back in time, to the height of the 19th century.

Tour duration: 2h