



Palazzo Brunelli Bonetti in Padua
Project
Restoration of residential complex
Location
Padua
Project year
2010-2016
Client
Private
Surface
1400 mq
Built in the second half of the fourteenth century, Palazzo B stands near the church of the Eremitani, just outside the main centre of Padua, originally next to the medieval city wall on the street that connected the Roman arena to the Porta Romana towards Altino-Venezia. The building was extended at the start of the twentieth century with a comb body positioned between Via degli Eremitani and the Riviera dei Ponti Romani, and has the typical characteristics of the Lombardesque palazzetto in the ancient, listed section. These can be seen in the main facade, the ground floor portico and the elevation facing the inner courtyard, and in the vertical hierarchy of the floors, which have the usual distribution of functions: workshops and storerooms on the ground floor, service rooms on the mezzanine, master’s apartment on the piano nobile and other residential accommodation on the second floor. The precise and delicate restoration of the degraded surfaces, reinforcement of the structural parts, reorganisation of the distributional spaces inside and improved accessibility to the entire building converged in the overall upgrading of the building, allowing greater knowledge of its alterations over time, respecting their historic nature and at the same time adapting it to modern residential needs. Every operation was carried out with respect for the traditional materials, colours and construction techniques; every addition – from the stone slabs of the steps to the uprights of the nineteenth-century staircase parapet – shows, in its diversity, a harmonious match with the ancient. The entire project brings back to light the typical layout of the ‘gentleman’s palazzo’, perfectly combining with the twentieth-century elements: two staircases and a new lift masked with appropriate finishes at the sides of a broad entrance hall lead to the upper floors, while the ground floor and its mezzanine, facing onto the covered walkway, have been taken back to the dimensions of work spaces, with independent access from the public street.