Palazzo Vescovile di Lucera

The building is one of the most important examples of Baroque architecture in Daunia. The origins of the building date back to the fourteenth century and the will of Bishop Casotti. Later the complex, then much more modest, was renovated and expanded several times. The same suffered serious damage with the earthquake of 1456 and was then restored under the episcopate of Ladislao Dentice.

The episcope at that time was still a modest one-storey building, consisting of five rooms. The enlargement of the palace was begun by the bishops Pietro Ranzani and Pietro de Petris who in the sixteenth century realized the construction of an upper floor. At the beginning of the 18th century, Monsignor Domenico de Liguori started the new construction, but it was his successor, Giuseppe Maria Foschi, who was responsible for the project, thanks to the appointment of the Neapolitan architect Giuseppe Astarita. The works continued throughout the 700 and gave us one of the most representative monuments of eighteenth-century architecture in Lucera. The facade is elegant and at the same time sumptuous; in it is experienced a skilful play of material and chromatic combinations: the white of the stone, the red of the brick, the cream of the plaster. The symmetry unfolds through the opening of balconies and windows full of decorations. On the ground floor the fulcrum of the composition is the beautiful portal vaguely protruding with respect to the profile of the facade, which introduces to a beautiful courtyard with an ovoid plan. From the elegant courtyard the right staircase leads to the noble wing, full of elegant halls, the left reaches the private apartment of the bishop. In its rooms is housed the Diocesan Museum, rich in sacred art.